Participation in AFRINIC-28 Meeting was Transforming!

From the 5^th to 11^th of May 2018, I took part in the AFRINIC- 28 meeting held in Dakar, Senegal alongside other AF* and Africa Internet Summit 2018 (AIS’18). This was the 28^th public meeting and I partook in it as a Fellow, representing The Gambia. As such, I was offered full travel cost, travel insurance, Hotel accommodation and Per Diem. AFRINIC fellowship which is awarded to young African leaders is part of community development process and capacity building to create ambassadors that will help in the Internet governance and development in Africa.

About AFRINIC

African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) is the Regional Internet Registry for Africa that has been set up to serve the African community by providing professional and efficient management and distribution of Internet Number Resources, supporting Internet technology usage and development, and promoting a bottom-up multi-stakeholder approach to Internet self-governance. As the youngest Internet registry in the world, AFRINIC is a non-government, not-for-profit, membership based organization, based in Mauritius. Trainings and capacity building are a central part of AFRINIC’s activities and their objective is to build competence within the African region required to use our resources effectively and to increase awareness within the service region on how Internet is governed and the roles organizations have in this environment. Learn more here.

AFRINIC organizes two Public meetings every year in various locations throughout its region. These meetings provide a unique opportunity for Internet-related individuals and organizations to gather and discuss policies governing Internet number resource distribution in the African Region, so as to share technical knowledge and to attend workshops and tutorials.

The first meeting of each year is held during the Africa Internet Summit (AIS). AIS is an annual regional multi-stakeholder ICT conference which aims to bring ICT business and technical community in Africa together to discuss regional and global ICT issues and challenges. The AIS is organized jointly by AFRINIC and AfNOG. An Annual General Meeting (AGM) is also held during the first AFRINIC Meeting of each year.

AFRINIC-28 meeting held in Dakar, was divided into two major periods: formation/training and the plenaries period. For the training period, AFRINIC-28 featured a three days intensive and hands-on technical training courses and workshops on IPv6, Internet Number Resource Management, and Cybersecurity. For more details on these courses and how to register,  please visit: https://learn.afrinic.net. And the other period focused on Number Resources management policies where policies which were developed through an open Policy Development Process (PDP) were reviewed. AFRINIC’s AGM was also held during this period.

Lessons learnt from AFRINIC-28 Meeting:

• The exposure and knowledge gained, not to mention connections made with all the amazing people during this meeting is just inspiring and transforming! I can confidently say now that I am an informed internet user who understands the Internet ecosystem and all its stakeholders.

• The PDP session gave me the opportunity to actually participate in the policy development process giving me a practical understanding of how policies are proposed and discussed to how consensuses are met. An enlightening moment as I also learnt how politics influence policies to how each and every end user’s view is reflected in the policy development process in a multi-stakeholder approach. Thus as youths, we ought to inculcate the habit of participating in processes that affect us directly or indirectly; particularly women who are mostly beneficiaries of whatever policy made, and not contributors to the drafting of policies that shapes the internet which affect them on a daily basis.
• AFRINIC had 7/8 IP address blocks and has issued 6/7 block remaining only with 7/8, which is about 8M IP addresses. However, in the next 4-6 months, these remainder will likely be exhausted. Therefore, governments, ISPs, LIRs and all other stakeholders are urge to come take their share of the block before it is too late. IPv4 address pool is running out thus IPv6 seem to be the only solution to this exhaustion. So far, IPv6 deployment in the African region is not encouraging compared to other regions. The good news however is that, AFRINIC offers IPv6 training and how to deploy it. You can become an AFRINIC member here  and go into IPv6 instead!
• There is a massive pool of opportunity out there that the internet ecosystem has to offer to young Africans to benefit from and empower themselves, whether though training or fellowship. For instance:-
• AFRINIC offers grants and awards through their FIRE Africa initiative which is designed to encourage and support the development of solutions to the region’s unique information and communication needs. (Click here to learn more about Fire Africa.
• Organizations such as Internet Society (ISOC) also offers leadership workshops/fellowships through their Next Generation Leaders (NGL) Programme. Clink on ISOC NGL Fellowships for more info.
• Data protection is very important irrespective of your organization. With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which actually took effect on the 25^th May 2018, companies are likely to change the way the handle personal data. Law enforcers who are more in need of information want accurate and up to date data. The idea therefore is that data should be protected. However, GDPR prohibits the transfer of data to countries that don’t have an adequate level of data protection and establishes a procedure for determining formally if a country provides that level of protection. And currently Africa do not have what the EU considers to be an adequate level of data protection. Thus this might be a big challenge for Africa
• To combat Cyber bullies and crimes, Young Africans especially girls and young women should exercise cautions when sharing personal information on the internet because everything free is really not always free. Everything that you add on the internet either from your phone or pc is kept somewhere. These websites may be hosted free; but servers are very expensive to manage. Platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, etc are profit making entities. Therefore, your data is what they, or anyone who get hold of it, can use to make huge profits! Use wisely! Use only what you really need!
• Lastly, women Can make a huge impact and benefit to a great extend from the internet community without hassles. I therefore encourage as many girls and women to apply for the upcoming fellowships as possible. Take the lead ladies! Make use of the opportunities available!