FINISHED COPY
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE
INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM 2014
ISTANBUL, TURKEY
"CONNECTING CONTINENTS FOR ENHANCED
MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER INTERNET GOVERNANCE"
05 SEPTEMBER 2014
9:00
WS 134
AIGF MEETING: FUTURE OF INTERNET & PERSPECTIVE FOR AFRICA
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The following is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry to start late. This is a transparent session on the issue of Internet Governance in Africa. Today we have the Honorable Minister (indiscernible), the Minister of Information, Tourism and Culture who is going to chair our meeting. In this session we'll focus on four issues. The first issue we are going to have background information from Mr. Pierre Danjiniou, ICANN for Africa about the Internet transition. After his presentation, Mr. Koffee is going to make a presentation on dot Africa, and Mr. Pierre Ouedraogo is going to make a presentation. Titi is there, but I think Titi can tell something about Africa IGF, but she was chairing the organising committee. Could you come to the table, please. You come on time?
>> No, I have another time I have to speak.
>> I'll give the floor to the Honorable Minister to start the session. You have the floor, Honorable Minister.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you very much, good morning. Let me in the first place welcome you all to this session where we are concerned about the future of the Internet and perspective for Africa. My role is just to coordinate the discussion. I will shortly be handing over to a few officials here to proceed, but let me in the first place register my profound gratitude to the organizers of this session for appointing me to Chair this session. This is a great honour not only to me but also to my delegation and the people of the Republic of Malawi, thank you for that. Just an overview of what Mali has done as far as IGF is concerned, the two countries in the region, the third country to launch the IGF, IGF Malawi was launched on 25th July 2014 in the capital city of Malawi, it started with a quantitative meeting on 22nd July 2014, and presentations from academia, private sector and of course Secretariat. The function was sponsored by NEPAD and my department through the department of e‑Government which acts as Secretariat for the national ICT Working Group. The activity attracted participants from Government, the academia, the Civil Society, private sector and users of ICT. The objective of the Malawi governance Forum is to establish a central process that would shape the development of Malawi's Internet economy. We have specific objectives which are as follows: To increase the awareness and view the capacity on Internet governance issues of Malawi, to facilitate the participation of a broad range of Malawi in regional and global Internet governance and of course identifying emerging issues and bring them to the attention of the relevant bodies and to shape and inform the national body set and governance mechanisms.
Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, back to this session, as I've already alluded to the fact that I have a good number of people who would be talking on specific issues. Let me therefore without much ado hand over to Miss Titi Google to tell us more about AfIGF 2014. Thank you.
>> TITI: Thank you. The name is Titi Kiasummi. The AfIGF held in Abuja, Nigeria, I think it was the third AfIGF. So far it's been billed as the best, again, it gets better. I think of importance to note is there were about plus or minus 41 countries represented which is a good set of numbers and I believe all those countries were actually from the continent. Outside of the continent we had about seven other countries that were represented. In total I think there were plus or minus about 600 people, just correct me if I'm wrong, from 41 countries, 600 people from 41 countries. There was really engaging conversation. One of the take‑aways I had was to be a bit more, we need to tighten the planning of our content a bit more. Very clear recommendations were made, one of them including the fact that it's not suddenly a strategy should be built around having an event, but having specific activities that connect and being able to take that away with us to be able to implement and I know that at least in my capacity as the policy lead for Google, we are in conversations with the AUC, also with Civil Society ATC and other players so see how we can best take that forward.
Second thing was to review the structure of how we currently have the IGFs on the continent. Currently we have a lot of national IGFs and we have the sub regional and then we have the African one, but at times more often than not I know that the South African IGF has not attend place yet, the West IGF has not taken place yet, and Southern IGF will be taking place in Malawi, hosted by SIDAC. We need to review those. Also we reviewed there needs to be a tighter coordination body to ensure there's not just content but also continuity between the IGFs as well. I believe there was some capacity building that was done ahead of the IGF itself. One of these is supposed to happen, four events in total, also connected in a training that was held the week before I think organised by I believe ICANN, I believe Mr. Pierre will be able to speak more about it. But I believe one of the recommendations I have been touting a lot is the ability to connect the dots across various events and activities that speak to Internet governance in general. It will make sure we have the right people attending these meetings and also make sure that we are not seen as elitists and that the discuss actually matches in these circles. I hope I've done a good job. If there are any questions, feel free to ask me. I want to share my apologies again, I'm running from one session to get here and I have another session starting at about quarter past 10:00 so I may have to get up and leave a bit earlier.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. It seems you have a very busy schedule, I'll give the opportunity to open the floor in case they have questions to you before you take leave. I open the floor. Thank you.
>> And about your questions, I'll come back to you. I just realized actually one of the critical things that we identify, this is a personal ‑‑ I can't call it a pet project, but a personal concern of mine, the fact that we need to understand our own capacity so we can better understand our issues and be able to articulate that, ask as part of that what we're currently doing with the African union NAPA agency in partnership with DIPLO is three schools for Internet governance in Africa. At sometimes you think Internet governance is a very specialized conversation, and we plan to have 35 people in one class, we just plan to have one class because we felt applications might not be that many, nobody knows what Internet governance is. Interestingly, there were 600 applications. I've been in these conversations for about 14 years, I know it's very installed compared to on the extreme, probably been around for 25 years. On the applications I was happy to see there were not applications from people who already knew a lot about the conversations. Those were probably 5% of the total 100%. So 600 people, a majority of them were people who were sitting in key positions that would influence whatever discussions we had, who were applying to know more about it. That for me was exciting. So we ended up with three cohorts or three classes, two in English and one in French and we are hoping we can actually continue this and we need to spread the word to the opening of the applications next year, then the face to face Internet African school on Internet governance will be happening later this year, in all likelihood in November, I believe APC has sent out the call for applications, I think that should also help spread the word.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Just a commented and a quick question. First of all I would like to appreciate ANICA for the AfIGF, appreciate coordinated the African IGF the past three years. There are some meetings we can always improve, private sector participation, at the very beginning, so I think there was a gap in that and because at the last minute we had to run around private sector people, so I want to say can we positively improve on that going ahead or going forward for the next IGF? Because the next frontier is strengthening national and regional IGF in the discussion or the mandate of IGF going forward. Can we actually do that, make it more inclusive and maybe even during and post review? Thank you.
>> Directed at the Secretariat than at me. But if I just remove the Chair's heart as the last AIGF hat and wear IGF hat I would say I very much agree with your position, we had tried tone gauge some conversations about engaging African private sector a lot more and I hope it's something we can actually develop a strategy on and I would be happy to join in that conversation and see how the Secretariat, now that it's sitting with the African union, get a lot more people pulled in.
>> MODERATOR: Actually, I think on this one UNICA has a presentation they will be presenting that recommend, thank you.
Back to the floor. Yes?
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Cintra Sooknanan and I'm from the Caribbean. I have a question for Titi, being a woman in the field, how do you feel the African IGF reaches out to women and builds on women empowerment and our specific issues?
>> TITI: Without having the direct date on my hand, I know it's one of the priority issues going through, I had the opportunity to participate on the coalition on gender on Tuesday morning, one of the things we have agreed going forward is to actually actively engage women in general a lot more. It's not that that has not been happening, but again, it's about being able to ‑‑ it's about taking the stage so that women who are well equipped to be able to take the stage to be able to lead conversations, but it's about understanding how we can better enable them to be at the forefront of the conversations. I'm also very careful to find the balance between, because I know that at a point I got very disenchanted with being a statistic, female, black, young, African, but rather to engage with women based on this and not just on the yen did her basis. So I think if we can enable women a lot more, we'll have the capacity to do much better but on the regional and on the African stage. I know there's a proposal on the table that Olga Cavali and myself are talking about the possibility to maybe have a school on Internet governance specific to women. We'll see where that goes. At least it will be one of many more initiatives.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Any takers on the floor before we... thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is John Dada from the Foundation in Nigeria. I was privileged to attend and I remember one of the issues that kept coming up was the issue of funding for participants, it seems to have been a perennial or annual challenge because virtually the same source from which support has been accessed in the past is the same place we keep going and there was concern of how do we make this more sustainable? Could it be that we should scale down the sub regional events and just concentrate on the national and the regional? But I think it's a challenge to think outside of the box and look at how do we begin to look at how to fund this to make it more sustainable.
>> TITI: So I see that it's going to be addressed in the presentation, but I also wanted to be able to put this on the table because I probably won't be around when you'll be having that conversation, is the challenge of replication. There are so many events that touch on these issues that sometimes I'm not asking us to Council anything now, but we need to be able to connect the dots a lot more, and one of the proposal that is I have in chatting with people about this past week and I mean Civil Society, Government, other players, is on our continent, for example, we now have something called the African Internet summit that has the technical community present, that has business present, that has to some extent Government present, then we need to be able to identify how we can piggyback or coordinate or collaborate to have the African IGF also at that event.
For me as a funder, it makes good business sense, it made good financial sense, and it also means we can actually have a connected conversation as opposed to disconnects that happen. It also means I have a bit more time on my calendar to do other things that I like doing. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Titi. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Now, after all is said and done, the issue, the question is how far are we going with the INS transition. With this, let me therefore hand over to my colleague Pierre to give us highlights on this one. Over to you.
>> PIERRE DANJINIOU: Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone. I'm actually going through a dilemma because I also have a panel I'm supposed to be there by 9:30 but of course we have to give way for the lady, so she left, but that's okay, I'll try to cope with it. And I also do have questions pertinent to how we best organise the African IGFs, will be around for more than 15 minutes as of now.
Basically in terms of the transition, I would like to say that right now we do have the main session, the main meeting room, we do have a session which is starting at 9:30, which is exactly about this transition, it's going to be a very comprehensive one and you have all the information there, but what I would like to do quickly is maybe go through and provide a background for all of this, kind of status report where we sit now and where we are heading briefly. Of course we understand what's IANA and what it's doing, it's linkages with ICANN, I'm not going to dwell on that, but suffice to understand that the issue at stake here and when we talk about the transition of the stewardship of the NTIA on IANA function, when we say this, I think it's about securing an engagement of the wider community, including governments in the multi‑stakeholder data process so what the NTIA was requesting on the 14th of March in its announcement, that it's actually prepared to release stewardship, what they're asking for is to hand it over to a certain mechanism that will show its inclusiveness and that ultimately it will be about strengthening the governance of those functions, and those functions are quite simple and they're actually key to the Internet. You know that ANA is the one that manages the DNS but they also manage the numbers, you know, IP addresses, the root system. So what is the call of the Internet is what they do manage. When you say Internet, that is exactly what they are talking about, the sort of key functions. And those functions normally were contracted to ICANN, and of course ICANN subcontracted those to ANA, this is something we should understand. So in the announcement of the NTIA, ICANN was designed, was charged with facilitating a global dialogue that results in the proposal for the transition. So we have to bear in mind the U.S. Government is looking for what we might call a proposal to really provide this, to transfer the stewardship. So the process was started during ICANN 49 meeting in Singapore, and basically the process was the following. Of course we requested comments online, comments came on this announcement, and what was interesting is that it was heavily positive. People really of course like this, but also now we also need to get down to the job because what the U.S. Government was saying is quite clear, but there are some conditions, you know, to what they are requesting from us. So ICANN certainly is supposed to report back, so what they've done so far is quite simple. There's a repository where you can get more information on that, so I'm not going to get into that one. But the process involved, you know, global stakeholders' discussions, but I think the most important thing to note today is that we are at the kind of juncture where we are able to establish what you call the ANS stewardship transition coordination group, which is ICG, you'll be hearing more about this ICG. It's quite important. The ICG is going to now be in charge of this, and by the way, yesterday I think the ICG issued a request for proposal to select a suitable contractor to perform its secretarial function which means that this ICG is going to be the one that will produce that proposal that will be submitted to the U.S.
Now, I don't want to get into detail because you might also want to know who are the members of this ICG, are they African, yes, they are on the website too. Maybe briefly what I will do is also to maybe see what's the way forward and why African should be interested in that. First the way forward is in terms of time line for this. Normally the ANA contract ‑‑ I mean the ICANN contract with the U.S. will be terminating as of September 2015, and ideally people will think that that could be the deadline for submission, but at the same time the U.S. Government is saying that, well, it's giving as much time as we would like for that. So bear in mind that this can be a whole‑year sort of process.
The other thing that is going on today is it's also questioning some issues within ICANN, which is the accountability of ICANN, that's why we can support both processes now and that's why ICANN has engaged now into heavy debates on its own accountability.
Now, why Africa should be part of the whole debate, what the U.S. Government is trying to do here is transferring the to what they would like to be called a multistakeholder model, and also this is about policy development, it's about the core function of the Internet, so of course Africa should be part of it. And being part of this is what exactly? It's about understanding the issues, it's about contributing to the solutions we might come forward with, but I would say also it's about trying to be heavily involved because normally we are not involved in those things, but now we do have an opportunity to do these, so I will really think that Africa should be a part of this. Efforts have been done especially with that has established a discussion on this, but I would say it's from the perspective, and African ‑‑ think also about this, how do we have a repository, a centre on this process, that might be an interesting thing.
And then quickly, I think talking ‑‑ and I will finish with that ‑‑ talking about the future of the Internet governance when it comes to Africa, it's a good thing that we are clear about the Secretariat that's organising the African IGFs, but I think that we still need to be aware of a few things to stay organised. For instance, how are we promoting the multistakeholder at country level? IGFs, I always see this as civil societies kind of struggling to organize something, where of course as Titi said, the Abuji one there is some progress of the Government, which is good. I know that the southern African one is going to be taking place in Malawi and heavy involvement of Sadek which I think is quite good. Mr. Minister, I would really like the decision makers to be part of this process, has to be multistakeholder. We need to understand the issues at stake, which means we need to get prepared before we even come to these global meetings, ICANN or IGF, we need to really be prepared.
Now, I want to touch on an issue which is financing those things, and I would like to do this because partly ICANN is those who try to sponsor those things, but we also need to be sustainable in that there was a question of the way to think about how we do sustain this. And for me, the best way of doing this is through inclusiveness, how are we including the business sector? I always say go where the money is, and when you have the appropriate ‑‑ and the business, when you have the appropriate information, they might follow suit. And I was so grateful that Titi suggested this, that was exactly my suggestion, that we make sure that we link the African IGF with the African Internet summit. The Africa Internet summit we crafted this as a kind of framework or platform for all sort of Internet activities in Africa, and this we are not actually reinventing the wheel. This actually already exists in Asia. In Asia for the whole week they do have this sort of governing around Internet, and it's about talking about technical issues but also policy issues, research and development, you know, the business, the industry, all of them in a whole week and they talk about it. I would like us to really link this to Africa Internet summit which also happens every year. That will also piggyback on this event and also the funding of this, so I would like us to really consider that one. So Minister, thank you very much for your attention, but that's quickly what I wanted to share, and I'm ready for a few questions before I leave. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for that elaborate presentation. Let me also open the floor because he has some other things to do, he has some other plenaries to attend. Any takers on the floor inasfar as his presentation is concerned? Yes?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. My name is Mary Udama, I'm from Nigeria. We hosted the 2014 AfIGF, and I like the idea of linking the AfIGF with AISN, Africans do gather there. I would like to make a comment on our inability to contribute in the debates. We should be interested in the ANA transition or the stewardship transition because it's a question of somebody that has been supervising a process and saying, look, I want to give up a process and I want a proper institution to be able to do what I was doing. All right? So I want to say that I am a member of the ICG, with Ideal. Ideal is representing the number community where I represent ccTLD, the domain name community, and I got them through the ccNSO but I found out that I've been trying to communicate with our cc's in our region, they're not responding to the communication. First the RFP for Secretariat, anybody can apply. If you know that you can do the job, you can apply to be the Secretariat for the ICG. So it's open, anybody can apply. That's one.
Secondly is that the RFP for contribution. The ICG is just the coordination, the work is done in the community. The cc's in Africa should come up with their own proposal, what they think should be the right institution to do what NTIA was doing. NTIA is saying I'm no more going to supervise and the sovereignty issue here, all cc's, they have the sovereignty, that is the critical Internet resource of every country and in some our countries in Africa is the Government that is in charge ‑‑ it is the Government that is in charge of cc's, so we need to come up and say, look, this is what we want. NTIA has said there should be no Government can, is that what Africa thinks? Is that what we want? If we don't want that, we could also say, look, because of our own environment, we deal with Government and all the rest of them, there could be a different model we can propose, but the coordination group is not going to do a proposal. They are only going to tie up all the proposal from the community, so the work must be done in the community. Let me stop there so that other people can say. I also want to say that the AfIGF will need the business to be part of it. We are grateful to Google but there are operators in Africa that are making a lot of money in Africa. If African Government can write them to say they should be contributing to the AfIGF, I think funding shouldn't be a process in AfIGF. Please, Minister, maybe when you get back to AU, I like what happened yesterday, the publication between AU and EC, and the Secretariat, if the Secretariat has moved to AU, then AU should be able to compel or should urge the countries to write to those that are making a lot of money within our environment to contribute to the financing of the AfIGF. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. That was good information. Let me stand. The multistakeholder approach is a way for recent discussion of policy direction, policy direction vis‑a‑vis ccTLD management, vis‑a‑vis even industry management, law, investment, policy development, so on and so forth, so my question now is, how do we strengthen this multistakeholder approach in Africa? I'm from the private sector and we know the effect of liberalization in our economic development. So I think our focus should be on that and before today IANA transition, I think today that's what we should be concerned with. How do we leverage on the IANA requirement for multistakeholder approved organisation to also develop and strengthen our own inbound quality and organisation, so we don't think Government alone should handle it, and I think we're past that stage and we need to open up for all the stakeholders. So how can we do that more?
>> PIERRE DANJINIOU: I think that is a good question, and I also don't think I do have all the answers for that, but maybe quickly I will think we need to demonstrate ‑‑ when it comes to businesses sector, for instance, one of the things I would tell you is what is in it for me? You go to whoever is there and making money, but how is this going to increase my business? That's where maybe we working from Civil Society or technical component should be able to explain those things to them, and also the regulators, and the regulators in most of our countries, they have the means and the means to administrator, everything regulators at least in Africa, they have a specific role to play, which is contribute to exposing Africans to the issues, and one way of doing this is to make sure they are part of the multistakeholder model and that they finance. I really insist on that, Mr. Minister, they have to finance because they are having the license fees but at the end of the day, who is paying for the licenses? It's the users. And their job is also to actually facilitate, you know, the acquisition of the knowledge and I think it's important that they be part of it.
And now as you said, Government also has a role to play. We are getting something, 1%, I don't know what the fees are from those operators. Well, why don't we give part of this money to organising our own multistakeholder in the country? These are definitely the sort of decision, political decision that we can make so that they are part of this. I know they want to be part of those things but of course they want to know, what is in it for them? And Civil Society, like I was telling yesterday, should stop preaching those things. We are always preaching to them that is good, but no, you should demonstrate to them. So let's try to work on that and we'll have them on board because, come on, look at the situation here, and most of our meetings here, most people that are coming here are not sponsored. It's the business that is paying for them to come. It's only in part of the world that we are talking about sponsorship all the time, and I think we should continue with that but make sure that we are much more sustainable in the way we do those things, and the way to do that is at the business sector, the industry of Africa is still there. This is just what I wanted to share.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. You may take leave at your pleasure. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me therefore invite Mr. Koffee, who is an African liaison, to present something to do with dot Africa. For us to achieve this, we need to go the dot Africa way, but how far have we gone with this the on issue of dot Africa? Over to you, Mr. Koffee.
>> Thanks, Honorable Minister, for giving me the floor. I will not bother you with all the historic details on dot Africa. Suffice it to say that it has actually pen a very challenging process which required your supports, your continued support and engagement. At this stage I wanted to update you about the recent action taken by ICANN regarding the dot Africa application, following registry agreement signed in Singapore between ICANN and ZNCR my organisation and the African Government to operate technically under Top‑Level Domain. Another company called the DCA filed a request for a DPN review process regarding ICANN's decision to proceed for the African delegation and as part of the ILP, requested on emergency state on any further activities on any application on dot Africa until issued the final decision on the case.
So in fact, ILP has issued a decision that ICANN should hold off from further processing of all activities pertaining to my organisation, ACL's application for Africa Top‑Level Domain, in order to allow the panel time to consider arguments from DCA and ICANN on DCA's claim regarding the dot Africa Top‑Level Domain, and I called into ICANN panel's decision effective immediately, ICANN will seize all proceeding activities pertaining to app the application to the Top‑Level Domain application resolution of ILP. So recently in London, among other activities, it's advised the ICANN board to provide timely information, in particular to provide clarity on the process and possibly time lines. From my side as the registry, we don't know when the final decision is due because the ILP panel has not communicated a time line for the consideration activities and decision. And in order to update the relevant stakeholders and especially African communities, African Government, Malawi and all those governments in Africa who have always provided the supports for the operation for dot Africa, it's quite critical and critically important that we receive clarity on the way forward, including proposed date for the conclusion of ILP. Unfortunately Mr. Donjino for Africa is no longer here, he left for another panel. Otherwise, I think from ICANN perspective he could also update us on the way forward because still today my organisation have no idea about the way forward, even the proposed date. So we have already launched three ccTLDs, dot Jobold, dot Cape Town, and dot (?) and we're still waiting to launch dot Africa since May 2014 and we are trying to gauge and manage the impact of this delay on our preparation and also to launch the TLD and subsequent expectation that has been created in the market following the registry agreement we signed in Singapore since March. So what we want from ICANN is to understand the broader parameters to which we are now bound, and as we hear the African stakeholders, the African community, we really need from your side action because on our side it's between ICANN and DCA, we can't do anything, our hands are really tied, so we really need from your side action on the way forward in order to secure the quick launch of dot Africa. Thank you, Honorable Minister.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for that presentation again. I would therefore once again open the floor for discussion on the presentation. Any takers on the floor? Yes?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Mr. Koffee, for that. Thank you for the excellent coordination. I'm really concerned about the delay in dot Africa, you know, implementation, because I know the image application and I know the reach implication, in terms of presenting our cultural heritage and diversity because that is the focus anyway, the brand, the dot Africa brand. But at the same time we are law abiding, and we follow the rule of law. So we too are stakeholders, in fact, we were making initiative to register, and that was when we also got to know that there was a problem, so we are not happy about it, and with regard to what we can do, we too have laws we are also looking at following the process. So we also need to have more briefing from you about what we could do because we are stakeholders, we want to project Africa, and there are many plans we have for dot Africa as users. So we appreciate your feedback and to also get information about time lines so that we could plan appropriately.
So information is very key. We need to get information across and through the network and create that database to get those, but the bottom line is the rule has to be followed, and it is very important that we are sensitized concerning what is happening in that respect. But the prospect and the future of dot Africa is secured, is nonnegotiable, that is our brand, and if it requires some amount of waiting, wait, but we want quick resolution as well. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Yes, I agree because it's a lot of information sharing because both sides need to extend information, we need to find appropriate ways and means whereby that critical information can be shared and it is only by doing that we can forge ahead, but no information sharing, we won't proceed. Any takers on the floor? Questions? Comments before I close this? Otherwise, thank you very much, Koffee, for this presentation, it has been noted and I believe for now that there's going to be some trend as far as information sharing as per your concern is there. Ladies and gentlemen, let me proceed this way in that I call upon Mr. Pierre, who is a Director of the international organisation of French‑speaking countries. He has a presentation as well, if you would come up, Mr. Pierre, I thank you.
>> PIERRE OUEDRAOGO: Good morning. I hope you all have your headset so I can speak in French. It will be more clear for you. If not, you have everything that appears on the screen.
(Speaking French).
>> PIERRE OUEDRAOGO: Is it going on or not? No, no translation. Okay. I have to do it in very bad English. Sorry for translation that did not work. I was mentioning that the idea comes from President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, who has announced about the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly last year and has called for a meeting in Sao Paulo this year, this meeting has the principle known as NETMundial principle, but sometimes as you know, when you have big meetings, you have nice paper but no action, no implementation. It came to the idea of Mr. Fisiadi and some others with a Forum to set up an initiative to help to implement the principle, and that's what happened on August 28 in Geneva at the World Forum, World Forum. As you know the WAFF, this is abbreviation for the Forum, is a neutral place where the decision makers of all the world meet every year to discuss matters that relate to the future, the perspectives and everything. And so for the next meeting scheduled in Italy at Davos, Davos is the place where we organise the meeting, we are going to talk about the NETMundial principle and how to implement it. But for this first meeting of the launch of initiative, there have been a couple discussions on the policy sector between the mainly high level people, it was chaired by the President of Estonia himself, and beside Mr. Fadiciadi, you had also the ITU Secretary‑General Mr. Amadan Toure was there and they had exchange on the policy aspect. I will not go deeply into that because this is politics, but for the operational parts, we have the presentation of four projects and the description and going until the meeting of DAVROS in January to see how those projects can be implemented. We have a study that will be conducted by the Beckman Centre on Internet governance and others, but I think two projects I wanted to mention especially here are the one presented by Brazil and the other one by ICANN. Brazil has proposed to have a project on best practices. This means that this project will help to disseminate success stories in the multistakeholder model, like CGIBR or in Lebanon so that people can organise their own national Internet ecosystem on the multistakeholder model. I think that you are all aware of Brazilian model as the Minister himself has presented it at a high level and at the opening ceremony.
And ICANN is also planning to build a toolkit for Internet governance. Why I wanted to speak of that with you here is that I think that this could be a good opportunity for Africa. We are always late sometimes, and here we have the opportunity to be on time with the rest of the world and use the successes that have been reached in Brazil, in Lebanon, in other countries, to build our own national Internet ecosystem because if we don't have the national ecosystem built, we are the losers in Information Society because even for participation, when you go outside, to who are you going to report when you are back in the country? You report to yourself sometimes or to your organisation, but not to the country. But if you are organised, you can report and make the country benefit of what you have learned, what you had the opportunity to see outside. And I think this is a key issue because as you know, the winners are always for the one who are the most organised because human beings or organisation by themself cannot succeed, but if they put their intelligence together, their efforts together, then they overcome difficulties. And this is the lesson I learned from Geneva and I wanted to share with you and tell you that every one of you should be national ambassadors to help get the national Internet ecosystem. We are working now on the programme for the years 2015, 2018, and we have a project name, national Internet ecosystem, and we are going to work on that with you, of course, in the countries but we are still open to share the best practice with other countries. So let's do what I call the work and build the first in the country, and we will grow strong. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for that presentation in English.
>> PIERRE OUEDRAOGO: Of course you understood everything.
>> MODERATOR: Of course. Thank you very much.
Let me again open the floor for comments and questions.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you very much, Pierre, that was an excellent recap of NETMundial, I had the privilege to be on the high level committee of NETMundial, and I can also from my direct experience say that indeed that was a classical example of multistakeholder approach, you know, to discussing national, regional and global issues, and not just multistakeholder, but also bottom‑up. Not even just top‑down, but bottom‑up, realm from the basis, information was synthesized and collected and continued until it got to the set of principles that we have and the roadmap, so it was a reflection on the model and it is good. I want to ask you what you said, your advisory to national ecosystem because if you go back there, who do you report back to? Do you report back to yourself? So I was in a panel yesterday that was a classical example of what our multistakeholder has been working, to solve child sexual abuse issues, which is a very serious issue even for us in Nigeria, and it used to be a Government‑only approach, and at that time they had 20% of the abuse was around the UK, but after many people are involved, many stakeholders, the private sector, the technical people, the consultation, the reports came that it went down to 6%, so there's a lot of value in using the bottom‑up multistakeholder approach, and for private sector it is not true that private sector doesn't want to be involved, but at the same time it's true that private sector will ask, what is the needs for me? Because you have to consider return on investment, you expect to invest, but if it is not clear that the land is flat, there will be good rain, plant the corn, otherwise it will be wasted. So the point then is that AU, UNETCA they also need to appreciate this and find a way to drain those stakeholders. They are not peers, they are not participating, because I also have an experience here today that's one of such Telecom that people think, oh, they're not interested. Of course by the gentle application and there was great opposition that wow, this is what's going on, so people have to have an understanding of what's going on, and in the region we really have a major gap.
So I want to support your submission that we need to embrace the multistakeholder approach. We've seen the example in net Mundaire and it needs to be sustained, and it's the Government, Mr. Minister, it comes from the Government, the Government needs to take the initiative. After all, when does Internet started? It was the Government USG that created the initiative to empower the private sector, empower the Civil Society, empower the communities until they're able to mature and stand on their own. The time will come when you need to beg them to come. They will be there, just as we see internationally. So that is an important lesson I really want to plea that we get a region, we need to encourage the sectors, private sector, there's money there, there's no doubt, but before they put in the money, their eyes need to be open and we need to find a way, because I'm a business person. If I don't see the value, I won't spend money. But a tree cannot make a forest, so we need more because the discussion is across many spectra. Thank you very much.
>> AUDIENCE: My name is Capra from South Africa. I've got two questions. One would be to Mr. Minister and Mr. Pierre. The first one, Mr. Minister, we've seen in Africa, especially coming from south Africa, we organise the Forum in July, all the stakeholders were there, Civil Society, business and so forth, but one multistakeholder was not involved, it was the Government, and it's not that we didn't go to them and discuss with them to take part within this IGF. We did, but there's some comments regarding that. So my question would be, the Government mostly did not favor the multistakeholder concept, they did not favor it.
So what really works for them? Just to put it in more clarity, what is it that the Government will think will work for them in multistakeholder doesn't work for them? I don't know if my question is clear.
Then the second question to Mr. Pierre would be, ICANN during the WGM meeting mentioned that you would develop a toolkit for Internet governance. My question is, what is that toolkit or how will that toolkit be different from the current toolkit that we have around Internet governance? Thank you.
>> PIERRE OUEDRAOGO: Okay. Thank you all for your reaction to the presentation. It is a short presentation because the discussions are ongoing, so it is important, any input is very important at this stage, because before January, we can shape everything, but after that it will be difficult. So what I would suggest according to what you have just asked is that we may try to set up a Working Group, maybe a small Working Group of all of the people that apply in the process of the NETMundial at the high level, because in Geneva there were three from the African networks and you were at the high level in Sao Paolo, so we can have a small group for the Forum. As you know, Mr. Allah Marco is here, you have seen him at the opening, so we can use the links we have to try to have the African interests to be taken into account inside the ongoing work. As I said, if we are not organised, we are the loser, so it is time now to do that work and maybe have five, six people, you know, I think that as Ideal and BARAK were already at the meeting, we could have maybe three, four people to be added so we have a group that follow and that make sure that African interests are taken into account at every stage and every project. For the toolkit it is done by ICANN, so I think that we shouldn't have to worry much because Pierre and Rachel is now the VP for Government, so we have key ambassadors that can watch and report to the community whenever it is necessary in the toolkit.S.
Also at the level we are working, we are in contact with ICANN on that subject. So we'll keep update on the Africa list, I think all the people, you are all on the African list. Who is not on the Africa list? And some people who are here can submit it, AF TLD, right? ASIA and everything, you know. But we need to have that group to be organised. If not, we are by ourself and we will not succeed if we do that. But if we can after the session here, tell them we have a group now and want to follow and so on, and I think it is going to be very good for Africa. And in every country, the delegation, if you have your head of state or Prime Minister or Ministers or CEO's, that are going to Davos, it is important that they have a briefing before they go in order to make sure that if there is something related to Africa, that they can react and explain because as you know, Davos is quite close and sometimes you have a Civil Society that make some parallel events because the cost is very high, also they're world leaders, and sometimes when you have the world leaders, you don't have the people sometimes, so this is a suggestion I want to put on the table, and Mr. President, I put that in your hands. Okay. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: That's a very good idea. We can all agree as my colleague here was saying. But going back to our question, the question to me, I think, I don't want to beat my own drum. Let me hand over to Mr. Ganda from the Malawi regulations authority to respond to that question. Thank you.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Honorable Minister. I think that question which you are asking Government participation in the IGF meetings, yeah, on that one maybe I will say I think it differs from country by country, mainly looking to the institution which has been mandated to spearhead the IGF within the country. I will take an example in the case of Malawi. We launched the IGF, that was in July, and the decision which is mandated to spearhead the national ICG Working Group and that institution was established by the ministry sometime back to other issues and then the department for e‑Government is the Secretariat for the whole issue, so we find that our structure is more of evolving Government, as such, I would say always Government is there.
Now, in the case of south Africa, I am not sure how you are structured in terms of to land those activities. That's why I was saying it goes maybe country by country in terms of the institution which has been mandated to spearhead those IGF activities. Now, maybe in the region or whatever you find that still deposit is pushing, the individual meeting, that's the 17th up to 19th, of course it's taking place in Malawi. So maybe my answer on that would be to say on a national level, which institution is mandated to do those activities. That's very important. Thank you. Auto.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Honorable Minister. Just quickly, the history of Nigeria, in 2005 the President called all stakeholders, he called the private sector, Civil Society, even the regulator and said all of you go and discuss and then tell me what you want to do and do it. So since 2005, they met and they are going to set up an organisation, register the organisation, and all of them are managing it and there's peace in the ecosystem in Nigeria. Before then, there was no peace. So I think it's a multistakeholder approach, it is stable and it's sustainable. And that is a model we've seen in Brazil and other places. And my question is, again, like we see that the original organisation, they are not actively involved. So how can we get AU or UNECA in the process to get a relationship handshake between AU and original organisation, like ECOAS because it's not been, for example, in West Africa.
>> PIERRE OUEDRAOGO: Mr. President, we have a proposal here for the Africa networking group but it couldn't be completed. The CEO and President of OneNet, you remember when all of our Internet specialist organisations and they had a declaration and Mark Ufnec from UNECA, at the initial meeting and Rachel Inne, Jim from Nigeria, I think, from Africa. From Africa.
>> AUDIENCE: He's Africa. No. Africa.
>> PIERRE OUEDRAOGO: Africa Telco. And Mark Iadelli from African Union. He's in the back? Yes? Mr. Yawoo?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. This is my first presentation in this kind of Forum inside the IGF, and I would like to know if ‑‑
(Speaking language other than English).
(Pause).
>> Thank you. My question would be on the African IGF, I would like to know the if there was a comment on the IGF and if there was, what are the plans to implement it going forward from that document, if there was a document from the African IGF.
>> MODERATOR: Let's thank Mr. Pierre for that presentation.
(Applause).
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, a journey of 1,000 kilometers will start with one step, and this step started in 2005 we had the first step in 2005, and with me here is my colleague Mactelia from UNECA for the African Union Commission, it has not traveled alone, it has the wonderful partner with UNECA and we want to know how far we have gone, the success is inside, the challenges inside and of course the way forward, and Matoria is also going to take the opportunity to address some of the issues you have asked, you have commented on when he will be briefing us on how far we have gone and how the journey has been. Over to you.
>> MATORIA: Thank you, Minister, we have only five minutes before we close our session, I am going to give you a brief overview of the IGF. As you know, this process was launched in 2010, dealings with IGF in Nairobi, my colleague was there and was leading this issue, and we created this African Internet Governance Forum in collaboration with African Union. The objective for this AfIGF, it is a platform to discuss all issues related to the Internet governance who may have interest for African country. Since the three African IGF meeting was organised, one in 2011 in Cairo was the first one, the second one in 2012 in Nairobi, and the third one last July in Abuja, Nigeria. What are the lessons learned from these three IGFs? First in terms of attendance, at the level of attendance, for the two first one in Cairo and Nairobi, the participation of the Government was very low, and I think the Government has an important role to play to the issue of IGF, how to implement if IGF doesn't give recommendation, but we can follow IGF and have some idea to use for the national policy. Why is the participation of the Government is very important. To know at the level for IGF what is the key issue for the African country, and I think as an issue of net Mundaire was a good incentive for African country.
In the last meeting of IGF, we tried to involve more African Government and it was good because we have a round of maybe more than 500 participants, 30% coming from the Government. 70% are not supported by the IGF Secretariat, they come themselves, I think it was a good starting point. Since the three years we work together in the African Union, Secretariat by ECA, and now I think what we discussed, we need to sustain the African IGF, why we are discussing the African Union IGF and now has moved to African Union Secretariat but is ICA going to support to African country, is it just a matter between the ECA and African Union? To make more efficient Secretariat. And also in order to see how we can sustain. We have several ideas here. We have to combine the African IGF meeting with African summit, I think it is a good idea we can also put on the table. We have also this ICT Week supported by the union but the problem is ICT Week is every two years. Now we are going to discuss with African Union to see if it is possible to organise ICT Week every year or to combine ICT Week and the Internet summit with African IGF. It is one issue on the table. The other issue is funding. Funding is very important first to sustain this African IGF. But generally the meeting is funding by ECA and their partner, Google, ICANN, ISOC, but we need the African country to participate. I think the African Commission is more interested in order get some fund from the Government. I think about we look at what we did with African Telecommunication Union ATU. ATU is funded by the African Government and is a regulatory. We can think about on the same exercise to try to get the fund from the Government. Now the issue I want to discuss, open discussion, to get you the idea, we have some idea to make sustainable the African IGF, the participation of the Government very important, funding by Government, so to evolve as a private sector. If you have another idea on the table, I think we are happy to receive your proposal, and we'll discuss with the African Union Commission to see what is the best way to make IGF sustainable and IGF Council can respond to the need of African country.
Also I think we need also to look at this conference room today, how many African countries are there? I think you don't have more than five or ten countries. Very, very low, who want to discuss, come to this kind of meeting to discuss the issue, the important issue like this Internet Governance Forum, but we talk about, we are going to next year prepare the outcome of the Internet Governance Forum to present what has been done in Africa since 2005 in Brazil. Okay. All right. Okay. I think it's very important so emphasize all African to participate in this debate and this Africa IGF issue is a full all African, not only for the private sector, Civil Society, Government, it's for all, and everybody has something to say to design this African IGF issue and also to have a common discussion pore all African and we can present something in Brazil. I think my message is just to incentivize you to try to work hard for dealing today until the next IGF in Brazil to get one common, and we can present something in Brazil, are African for the indication on the IGF. If you have any idea on the IGF, we are happy to receive it and to try to implement it. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for that presentation.
Unfortunately, time is not on our side. There's going to be another session in this room just very shortly, so forgive me, I'm not opening up for the plenary, but suffice to say that I am hopeful that whatever has been captured in this room will be put, in this session, will be put into use, and of course let me take this opportunity to thank the panelists here and my colleague and all the other participants, the delegates, for your comments, for questions, and for your presentations. As my colleague has rightly put it, let's start preparing for Brazil, which is the next year, now, because time is now, because the most thing that is killing us is our approach to business as business as usual. When we leave this place, when we leave Istanbul, we'll forget about it, then when we discover one or two months to the Brazil conference, we start running around, running up and down.
But let's start preparing for the Brazil Forum, when we go, we'll get back home. Without much ado, it's my pleasure to close this Forum. Thank you very much for being a wonderful audience. I thank you.
(Applause).
(10:59)
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This is the output of the real‑time captioning taken during the IGF 2014 Istanbul, Turkey, meetings. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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