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content="https://otter.ai/twitter_card/note/H9e5tRbOr3JhecqXpBvXbfh18ow?utm_source=copy_url&tab=chat"><meta property="twitter:player:width" content="480"><meta property="twitter:player:height" content="420"></head> <body> <app-root id="app-root" _nghost-otter-web-c2520555482 ng-version="16.1.3" class="material-icons-loaded" ng-server-context="ssr"><app-react-root _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482></app-react-root><toasts _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482 class="__tailwind__"></toasts><router-outlet _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482></router-outlet><tanstack-query-devtools _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482></tanstack-query-devtools><jotai-devtools _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482></jotai-devtools></app-root> <div id="otter-seo" style="display: none"><h1 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Internet Development Initiatives in Africa</h1><h2 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>8:51AM Mar 21, 2024</h2><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Speakers: </h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Michuki Mwangi</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Keywords: </h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>networks</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>internet</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>community</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>africa</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>infrastructure</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>ietf</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>kenya</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>webinar</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>country</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>call</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>support</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>share</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>developing</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>initiatives</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>government</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>participate</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>conversation</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>opportunity</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>questions</h3><h3 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>issue</h3><img _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482 src="https://otter.ai/static/Otter_Unfurl_Oct2019_LK94_1200x600@2x.png"><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Everyone, welcome to our webinar.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>morning and good afternoon, wherever you're joining us from a ladies and gentlemen is a pleasure to welcome to another AfriNIC webinar series. webinar today is titled, Internet to deployment initiatives in Africa. These series of webinars offer our community an opportunity to engage Adaro the current and future in the scope of Internet access security and vastness in Africa.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>In this and subsequently webinars, we'll see subject</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>matter experts gauge on various topics that stimulate the growth and debridement of Internets in Africa. Before we begin, kindly in the chat section to read, let me know if you can hear me and where are you joining us from? My name is Dr. Jabara moto Guerra. I'm the body member Destination Imagination Africa and rec Chara or the University of Dodoma in Tanzania. I will be your moderator in this session. And on the same</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>some of house roll. Certainly that most of us are familiar with the Zoom grant application.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>However, it won't happen if we point out the key features on the platform to make the session a much better experience was the interface so you can just work on controls at the bottom of the screen. This may include the chat icon Ryzen pen icon reactions for the live transcription button. The q&a section at the bottom of your screen can be used for any questions related to the session. Feel free to type in your question. The presentations are going on or questions on the floor will be read out. The partner is to respond to all the questions. The delegates share your comments regarding the webinar in the chat for any other issue related to zoom platform, like your connectivity or any other please use the chat section. The team member will assists this webinar is in English and the session is recorded and customer cheers is permitted live on AfriNIC YouTube page. The recording will be archived for your reference. While the issue of maybe two hit four then this year in 10.4. You're trying really hard to rev up everything we do and the only thing we are eager going to ask is for you to hit fall on our social media platform. Thank you so much. The final meeting shall abide by the African code of conduct is Be respectful as you engage with the participants on the webinar and also the AfriNIC code of conduct in the event the terms and conditions all available on the AfriNIC website is take time to read this and also be supposed to link the chats in the Zoom platform. Now maybe not today, we are privileged to have our wonderful panelists, Cedric Viet who is working as a stakeholder Development Manager at AfriNIC. They also privileged to have Sammy Chucky Mangu, who is the Regional Development Manager for Internet Society, my Wonder friends, and I'm happy to connect again through this webinar. And I also have barrack Patino who is the chairman of the association of the community network in Kenya. This is a bottom up approach to connect the unconnected Corporation so thank you a barrack. And now I also have this animator who is the software development consultants at Kitakata Kinsey GitHub, read me, allow them the opportunity to introduce themselves and extra appreciate to start whichever order. So my presenter welcome and be free to interact with the audience. Thank you so much. Welcome to the webinar.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Maybe I will start and introduce myself</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>thank you very much, Dr. Jabra and good morning, everyone. My name is Cedrick Bay. I work at AfriNIC stakeholder development manager focusing on technical cooperation and basically my role at Afternic is to make sure that we we have a smooth coordination when it comes to technical programs, working with our different stakeholders, which are all our we as members but also the critical infrastructures, the government, academia University, the technical community and so on and so forth. So there is a lot to do to say about it, but I will tell you a little bit more when I will do my presentation. Back to you that algebra.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So much, Rick, and I will take it nice to meet you Ken.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Welcome. Thank you, Dr. Matakohe.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>everyone, wherever you may be, my name is Amit cheeky monkey I'm the distinguished technologist for Internet growth, the Internet Society. For those who may not know the Internet Society is a global charity that was established more than 30 years ago and working at the intersection of technology and policy. They I'm here to talk to you about the work that we've done on Internet development. And I hope that in the course of the engagements, we'll get to learn about the work that we do the Internet Society, but also also how we can collaborate together to bring better connectivity and connect the unconnected in in our region. Thank you very much</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>go next Sir Okay, thank you very much, Dr. Jabra. My name is Benson major</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>software developer based in Nairobi, Kenya, and very interested in Internet standards and participate a little bit in the IETF which is heavily supported by the Internet Society. They look forward to doing a little bit more about ATF and maybe encouraging you to participate.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you so much such a distinguished panelists and one of interest in this conversation. So maybe I can give time for Cedrick to do a presentation and then can proceed.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you, Dr. Matt. Attagirl I'm</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>sharing my screen</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>okay, perfect. So once again, good morning or good afternoon,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>depending on where you are. So I will here talk a little bit about what we do at AfriNIC when it comes to Internet development initiative in Africa. And first of all, I want to I want to emphasize our vision and our mission. Why? Because a lot of time people ask us okay, you are supposedly just working on IPs. But also when you look at our our vision. It gives you a little bit more clues about what we do at AfriNIC Our vision is secure and accessible Internet for sustainable digital growth in Africa, and our mission to serve the African Internet community by delivering efficient services in a global multi stakeholder environment. So now when it comes to the Internet development initiatives that we have at AfriNIC we have a multiple but I will focus on five that we have. The first one is the technical community development program. What we will do is to build technical community because we think that they are the key to advancing the development of the Internet in the region, and also something important. Yes, technology is important, but always remember that people are at the center. And we think that those technical community will play a crucial role when it comes to developing Internet. Ensure that the Internet is totally stable, but secure but also accessible and accessibility here it's very important because what we have to look at it's not only the technology that is available, but how people can also make it available and accessible for all and we think that working with the technical community is actually one of the most efficient way to not only involve the members of the community, but also to see how that technology can be customized to the local context. And we will work mainly with NOC so network operator groups and some of those that we are working actively with in the region. We have the Bynum which is Burundi, ci now which is a Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, the NOC DR Congo as well cinecon node and we are also open to work with more nodes are they that either want to be to start or looking for partners to grow. The next one is the African technical infrastructure development program. That now we are looking more we have talked about people now we'll talk about infrastructure, and we believe fully in the power of collaboration. So we will work with a diverse group of stakeholders. This is a list of the stakeholders that we are working with, but it's not limited to that. So we will work with ISPs Internet exchange point will work with government agencies. So we have agencies like digital development agencies that are government level, work with them, and see how we can support them in the digital transformation. We also work with a regional Association, and one of them be being at you become Telecommunication Union and we want to partner with all those entities and see how we can support to making those critical infrastructure available and also for those who are not familiar with the term terminology critical infrastructure, it is any infrastructure that if ever they are not available, they will critically impact Internet. And what we want to do is to work together to create a strong and interconnected network. The next one is one of our flagship program, which is AF DSP. And this is the African DNS Support Program, also called African domain secondary program. And for this one, we have to remember that DNS is one of the main components not only of Internet but also of AfriNIC services and specifically due to the fact that as as AfriNIC, we are looking at such things as reverse DNS. So what we are doing here is taking into consideration our infrastructure. We'll make available to ccTLD and critical Internet infrastructure operator in the region services at no cost for them to host their DNS. So we will just act as a secondary for them or slave so that they have a secondary at no cost. And here this is something very important because look at the fact that a lot of registry in Africa it's only now that they are supported by the government. A lot of them started as initiative from the technical community or one of the, let's say, Internet founders in their country who fought to get this the registry available, but most of them did not have all the infrastructure available. So this program is mainly targeted toward those ccTLD in Africa, offer them for at no cost, no extra cost or to have a secondary posted AfriNIC infrastructure.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>The map that you can that you see there is most of the countries that we are covering, but we also you have to cause to take into consideration but that it's not only the first level but also sometimes the second level. So for some countries, we may have two or three or more registry that we work with, because of the second level. The next one is the root server copy. So a FRCP and here again, we will target principally the ISPs, but it's not exclusive. And what we want to do is to make Internet in the region more resilient. How? By providing copy of root DNS root servers or nodes, the region and we'll do that by sourcing the hardware, but also facilitating administrative contact. And our goal is really to make sure that DNS is resilient in our service region. For those who are not really familiar with DNS route something that you need to take into consideration is whenever you type a URL, such as three w.afnic.net, your DNS will first look for an available copy of the route setter to now start looking up for which IP will correspond to that URL. So having a copy of root server in your country will make it much easier for DNS resolution and the last one is our anycast program. I like to keep it for the for the last calls. Here. What we do is that we will deploy instances of our services outside of our infrastructure. And why because we want to make it available for all our community. And what is interesting when it comes to any casts is that it's totally transparent for you. There is an automatic failover so it will connect to the closest available instances. of the service. And which services do we deploy when it comes to anycast call, we'll deploy what we call the NS two, which is our reverse DNS, and the CIP which is mainly mostly the ccTLDs zone that we are for which we offer a secondary and so what is actually interesting with that is whenever when host anycast nodes for us will make it will make not only the the AfriNIC reverse zone available, but also all the African ccTLD that we support. And right now we have received close to 51st and second level ccTLD. And we operate from multiple location, and those are either location where we have physical hardware, but right now we are mostly targeting a virtual so we have Tunisia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Madagascar, we have South Africa, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durga, and Mauritius. And it's also an opportunity for me to thank all our partners that work with us and and that have been very faithful and helpful in deploying and our target for 2024 is now to reach out to more ISPs, because one of the good things in Africa is that we have more and more ISPs that are becoming strong and reliable. So we want to work with them and see how we can deploy DNS note. Thank you for your attention. And back to you Dr. Mehta girl.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So much Cedrick have such wonderful achievements that</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>AfriNIC is doing for the baton of Internet format in Africa. I really appreciate for work that you have already achieved the plan ahead of you. So maybe next presenter is Mr. Michel Kimani.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you, Dr. Mark Todaro says share my screen.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you again and it's a great opportunity for me to be here with you today. I'm going to just talk about the Internet development initiatives that the Internet Society has been working on in Africa over the past few years. I mentioned earlier, the Internet Society works to promote an open, globally connected, secure and trustworthy Internet. Because we believe in a world where the Internet means opportunity. We work collaboratively with our global community and partners to extend the Internet so that it's really able to reach those who needed the most and at the same time work to protect its long term well being. do so through various I'll say multi pronged strategy. I'll talk about the things that we've done or the approach that we take to extend connectivity and also protect its long term well being start with capacity building. And basically what we've been able to identify is that there is a need to develop technical expertise, so that we have a pool of subject matter experts that can be available to develop, maintain and operate the Internet infrastructure across the entire region. The way we develop these capacity building resources is that we have an online platform and also offline platform for the online platform. We have moderated courses, some are scheduled online courses. And also we have self paced tutorials where individuals can come in and just take the course depend on their time and availability. Others are on Demand training and we also do webinars similar to this one and collaborate with other partners as well as doing similar webinars. And at the same time we have face to face courses where we actually go in places where there is a need and help do the support the capacity building requirements in those places.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Over the last few years, we've had these trainings going on and it's been quite</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>impactful in seeing the number of people we've been able or learners that we've been able to reach over the past three years. For instance, since we transitioned into the online platforms, through our training and elearning system, and we've been able to reach over 30,000 learners. And on during this period we've seen a lot of growth, a lot of positive growth, where we've seen an increase in the number of women in terms of reducing the gender parity that has that was there previously. So increasingly, we are seeing more women coming and taking on the trainings. And also we've seen growth in terms of the number of people who are coming to take the courses, especially from our region, which still stands up as the highest number of learners that we get on our platforms. We have a number of courses on and I will certainly invite you to visit learning at Internet Society to see the trainings that we have on there and</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>everything that we do is fostering sustainable peering</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>infrastructure. This is where we support the development of peering infrastructure.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Then it exchange points by supporting the creation of new Internet exchange</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>points, and also supporting existing Internet exchange points. So that they can be able to have a bigger impact and support their growth requirements. In addition to that, we also support the development of the peering community. We believe that this is essential to growing Peering and Interconnection. Our partners at pch have done a survey over the years that showed that more than 95% of all interconnections happen through handshakes. And those timesheets, a number of them tend to happen through peering events and that's where we are very keen to support activities around peering forums, regional peering forums and national peering forums. And I will take this opportunity to do a shameless plug and inviting for the Africa Peering and Interconnection Forum which will be happening this year, in Kinshasa, in August. We have our website for it active.org. So please go there and you know, register, take a look at the plans we have set and also invite you if you have questions to come and present at that forum. So we are looking forward to be hosted by our in Kinshasa by is by DRC, who will be your host and we hope to have great conversations, but most importantly, promote interconnection and get more networks interconnecting across the region.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>As well the event is organized in partnership with our fi x the</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>African AI X Association, and so we are hopeful that as we continue this relationship and supporting our fi X in the future, our fi X will actually be taking leadership and organizing the RPKI event, which will be a major success at milestone for the work that we're doing in the region, to be able to transition some of that work. To the community so that they can actually chatted with forward in terms of what they would like to do with respect to the future of Peering and Interconnection across the continent. And of course, we also continue to support the regional peering forum we have lined up the West Africa PLO forum, the Central Africa peon forum and also the South African, the sadock I expe Forum, which will be happening also BBC and also other national ones like the Nigeria peering forum. don't end there we engage in policy advocacy, as well as policy, policy and regulation to improve local and cross border interconnection and also promote peering so that we are able to achieve goals that enable an increase in the amount of content that's reachable locally. We have the vision 5050 by 2025. We have a select number of countries that would like to see grow and have the 50% of the top destinations or websites or content that they reach, being actually accessible within the local market. And it will be remiss to say that we don't do all of this alone. We have a lot of partnerships that support what we do. We have collaborations and partnerships with folks like Cafe X, as I've mentioned, the Coalition for digital Africa, which is with ICANN, and others, Metta Sadhak and others that are too many to mention, but just mentioned those few.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>The next thing that we also do is connecting the unconnected</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>this is basically extending connectivity to those who are in rural remote and underserved areas. We have components of the work this includes providing grants so that we're able to say actually, structure deployments, we've supported about 11 deployments so far in Africa. We also provide on top of that capacity building support. This capacity building is designed so that the network's or the people who want to build community networks or other complementary access solutions don't need to directly come to the Internet Society but to get the help. We have a toolkit a do it yourself toolkit and a readiness assessment and makes it possible for people to actually access the information, the knowledge so that they can independently go out and build the Internet infrastructure. In addition to that, we help with policy advocacy that helps to create an enabling environment for community networks to actually exist. And we're quite happy that a number of African countries like Kenya, like South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, have actually put in enabling policies that make it possible for community networks to be created. They have regulatory framework that guides which actually a lightweight framework or lightweight regulatory framework, which is quite simple for creating bots to be able to apply and get the licensing and then proceed to do the actual implementation. Finally,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>the other strategy that we use is measuring</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>the impact. The, I'll say the the, the resiliency of the Internet, the availability of the Internet, the health and the evolution of the Internet. So we do that through a platform called pulse was launched in December 2020. And underneath this, we what we're trying to do is curate data from various trusted sources, enable people to have a deeper insight about what's happening on the Internet. So basically, just the health, evolution, and availability of the Internet. Make sure that people have the information that they need to make the decisions that they need to make. So we are targeting policymakers. We are targeting researchers, journalists, and all other stakeholders that have an interest with respect to the Internet. Of the things that are available include them resiliency measurements, which are basically looking at the performance of the infrastructure, the availability of the of the infrastructure, the security of the infrastructure, and the market readiness of the infrastructure of the net of the country that make it possible for</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>there to be a resilient Internet infrastructure in those</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>countries like that. And from that ranking, we are able to see where the country stand and what actions countries can actually make to improve their Internet resiliency. So I'll invite you to take a look at polls and see how that actually is how well your country is doing. And also in addition to how well your country is doing, see where the gaps are and what you can do to improve it. Next thing that we do and on measuring the Internet is also tracking global shutdowns. We know that this can be a challenge. We track the factors that lead to Internet shutdowns like civil unrest. Protests, armed conflicts, elections, and we've also seen situations where national regional exams lead to shutdowns, most of the shutdowns are ordered by by regional national governments. So we track them because we want to maintain the connectivity because it does have a negative impact. And we've been able to actually develop a tool called the net loss calculator, which is able to calculate the the economic costs of Internet shutdowns. So you're invited to go to the pulse platform and just look at those resources that help you be a better advocate as to why governments should keep the Internet on</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>record. Unfortunately, we are among the countries and</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>if you look at the previous map, where we've had the most number of shutdowns, the continent with the most number of shutdowns and elections, as I mentioned, is one of the times when shutdowns are likely to happen, we have 19 of them sort of sheduled for 2024 and we are keeping watch are tracking the developments. Just to be sure to make sure that, you know, we do a proactive outreach and engagement to encourage the government in those countries to not shut down the Internet during those critical times of the elections because that's a tool that people use for various other uses, and that disrupts the way of life. So some of the countries that we are quite sort of we're tracking at the moment because they have a higher Internet risk. Shutdown, shutdown risk, Mozambique, South Sudan, Ghana, Chad and Senegal. And we've also been able to calculate what that would mean if they were to shut down for a day, which is not small amounts of money. So, again, here, I would invite you to take a look at the tools and see how it can be. also become an advocate for you know, to those respective tracks, to avoid Internet shutdowns. So with that, I know I'm well over time. So I'll stop there and happy to take your questions. If you have any. Thank you. Very much and talk to you by matagal. Thank you so much.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>It's such a wonderful conversation,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>and we can just have a quick pause or questioning ourselves, for Cedric and for Mitsuki and maybe b I have seen some few questions in the chat, Question and Answer chat maybe before we respond to that. I have one question to Cedric and another to director to Mitsuki. Maybe to Cedric, Erica faces unique challenges in terms of Internet connectivity. The others, what are some of the prevailing challenges hindering Internet deployment across the Internet, the continent? How is Africa AfriNIC addressing those questions, challenges, be i</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>one needs are for sending to respond and then I can</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>ask another question to make sure to welcome Cedrick Thank you, Dr. Matta guru.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>It's true that our continent is</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>facing a lot of challenges. And it's actually sometimes difficult to say how to address it as because there is no magic wand. What we something that we have observed as AfriNIC is that each and every country have a different context. And what we will do usually on our side is to work with them. So work with all the component all the stakeholders, not only the government, but also the technical community and see how we can work with them. solution that can help for development. I will say one of them is raising awareness. Most of the time the challenge that we have is not understanding how bad taking the wrong decision. can impact the population. Maturity previously showed you some of the good work that ISOC is doing into monitoring the Internet shut down and being myself in a country where we had to suffer that currently in Senegal. We have seen how detrimental it was to to the population. Because people I mean, government decided for a specific reason to degrade the Internet connection, but then also, businesses had to close for many, many days because of that so what we will do one of the main thing that I will say is let's raise awareness, or focus on building capacity. We also at AfriNIC offer capacity building something people will look only at our flagship program which are the ipv6 and Internet number resources. problem but also we can accompany when it comes to other ways of building capacity and raising awareness. Thank you and back to you Dr. Matta girl.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you so much Cedrick and I see me Chuck in the charts. You have few more questions, but I would like to ask one more question to you, Mr. Mitsuki. And I should also acknowledge that I'm one of that beneficiary and work closely with Internet Society. But maybe Mr. Mitsuki you oversee Regional Development at Internet Society. Does ISOC collaborate with the local communities and organization to foster Internet development especially in the underserved area? I hope when you respond this it will also respond to another question which has been asked how Internet Society of course, community network could also benefit from a vision that you have mentioned clear on your presentation. Welcome, Mr. Chuck. Thank you my target of one thing we are very</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>clear on is that we cannot achieve</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>the goal of connecting the unconnected or bringing affordable, resilient and secure connectivity to all by ourselves. And so that is something that's very clear to us and we work closely with strategic partners. Organizations at regional level, national level to be able to achieve the mutual goal of connecting the unconnected and bringing open globally secure and trustworthy Internet to all and I can speak to this from a community networks perspective where we work very closely with existing community networks. We support capacity building opportunities and needs that are there through the online trainings that we provide, but also at the same time in person trainings as needed. We have trainers that we bring on to support the trainings, as well as we have what we call missile partners. So the mess of partners are institutions that have the knowledge and experience in how to build community networks. We make sure that they are supporting emerging communities or new communities that we've identified that that need the support to be able to, to deploy community networks clearly. So we work through best of partners. We work through partnerships like we have MOU with AfriNIC to do Internet measurements, to to as I explained, I explained development, so in various ways, not just at the technical space as well, but also policy advocacy. There is a need to create an enabling environment across the continent so that we can see the emergence of community networks and to do so we have MOU with with the African Telecommunications Union. We have ongoing partnerships and collaboration with the African Union. We have an MOU with smart Africa. We have an MOU with various policy organizations, where we collaborate with them to create awareness but also have dialogue and conversations around improving the existing policy and regulations. So that we create an enabling environment, more networks be established. So it's sort of like a high level. And I can go into the details of this but I think in the interest of time, just like to touch about it. I hope that response to your questions Yeah. Thank you so much, Mr. Mitsuki. And I really appreciate the work</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>that you're doing to connect the unconnected African community. In the beginning. I also mentioned that we have Barack Otieno, who was not able to introduce himself and I can give a chance by the cocina, who is the chairman, Association of the community network in Kenya, who will introduce himself and take about to present and share us what has prepared for us. Thank you. Welcome back.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you very much, Dr. Matta Gura for the opportunity, and</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I'll go straight to the presentation. My name is Bella cucina. I will be speaking in my capacity of the chair of the association of community networks in Kenya. My goal with this presentation is it's almost a it's a call to action on the need for us to also consider alternative forms of access or to ensure that as many people are online, my motivation for doing this presentation was a report that I looked at for GSM. But despite the fact that we are focusing on increasing coverage of connectivity, infrastructure and telecommunication infrastructure, there is a low amount or other alone number of people who are making meaningful use of this infrastructure. And as such, you'll find that if you look at the number of our start with domain names, because that's the field that I'm familiar with in Africa, we account for less than 1% of global registrations. If you look at the Internet numbers, the ones that are shared online. Africa is credited for about 500 million users, but most of them are probably on social media platforms. And you can't say that there's any meaningful</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>platform for lack of a better word. So while we focus a lot</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>of effort as has been given by me, trucchi and Cedric, in presentations that have actually touched on some of the issues that are talked about, there is need to increase meaningful usage of the Internet and community networks present this opportunity. community networks,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>not new. I think the conversation of rural networks</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>started in the early 2000s championed by among others, the International Center for Theoretical Physics. But more recently, the Internet Society has played a pivotal role in ensuring that community networks in other complementary ways of accessing the Internet are actually available. And I think would be amiss for me not to say that it's good to have these conversations but for as long as we are not getting our people online meaningfully. And we are not headed in the right direction. Or the last couple of days. I have tried to take our webinars for from different corners of the country outside the city and you're always running around looking for a good signal despite the claims that we are making, about the advancements that we are making, the advancements that we are making technologically and this is not right. Most of us on this call are from a village somewhere that I bet very few of us can actually take this call from the villages where we are in which just speaks to the state of connectivity in our countries. Last week, I was having a conversation with a colleague from the industry who cited the fact that despite interventions from the universal access fund or universal access fund in most of our countries, you will find that most service providers are still unwilling to get into the rural areas and deploy infrastructure because there is no business case. I believe that it's a season in time for community networks and they are not here to unsettle the industry the way it has been set but they are here to complement the work that has been done. I have presentation as part of the bullets that I've shown there. A lot of the issues or sentiments that I wanted to make have been shared. And so I will just breeze through but I'll talk about the journey of community networks in Kenya, Daniel's community networks in Africa, some of the milestones in the achievement portunities and challenges. commendations to the Regional Internet Registry, we have AfriNIC and then recommendations to country code, top level domain registries and other top level domains.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I think the journey of community networks</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I would put it in Kenya, also combined with Africa, I believe piqued momentum with the first summit on community networks in Africa, organized by the Internet Society, which Yuki had touched the meat of this on his presentation on 22nd November 2016. It followed a survey that had identified 37 community networking initiatives in 12 African countries, out of which 25 initiatives were considered to be active. This is information that I have picked from the Internet Society, which is also available online. As we speak the number of community networks has increased due to favorable policies, frameworks, support to various tech players. We now have over 25 active initiatives across Africa. Whether you're speaking of Tanzania whether you're speaking of Kenya whether you're speaking of Zimbabwe and the numbers are increasing, and my call is if you're on this call, and you have not started a Community Network Initiative. I think the opportunity exists for you to be a champion in your country. The meeting in the summit that was hosted in 2016. Among the first initiatives to present a mesh Bukavu, Bosco Uganda, Moran Vida works from Zimbabwe, Soweto wireless user group, or more Jeanette from the panda net from Kenya which was a pioneer community network funds from foundation from Nigeria and connecting in Hana, Namibia. Since then, the Internet Society went ahead and held a number of summits. The second summit was held alongside the Africa Internet Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, and I believe there was a practice session that exposed participants deploying infrastructure in community networks which was done at Juniper Gannett going forward, or going ahead other players such as the association of progressive community locations, to name a few has come on board to support the community networks conversation. And some of the ways in which they have done this is through national schools or community networks. In the previous iteration, which ended last year. We had, among others, the Kenya School of Community networks that was organized my printer printed on it with the support of APC. We had similar schools organized in South Africa and also in Nigeria, most recently led by the Internet Society Kenya chapter we had the first National Summit of community networks in Kenya that brought together stakeholders to just understand what do we mean when you're talking about community networks? Because they mean different things to different people. How can government how can private sector and civil society how can academia contribute to community networks and most recently, the Kenya ICT Action Network actually held a workshop to check out the community networks in Kenya are actually supporting differently abled people, so you realize the conversation is all about reaching the unserved and the underserved way of the activities or workshops that have been done, as I mentioned, the second summit that was held alongside the Internet, the Africa Internet Summit, the third summit in Eastern Cape, hosted by Zen Zeleny, which is also one of the community networks that has really built the body of knowledge in this space. fourth summit in Dodoma, Tanzania hosted by Condor Community Network, which is led by Dr. McDougall moderator. A lot of work has been done in Tanzania, in development of, of cooperatives that are leading community networks in Kenya. When we talk about cooperatives we think about saving money. In Tanzania when they talk about cooperatives more, they're talking about connectivity. And in the some that was hosted in Kenya we actually had to remake Community Network, which is an area close to the Kenyan border, also coming to participate so that we share our knowledge because of COVID. Some of these activities were held as much all events in 2020 2021 2022 and 2023. But it's my hope that beyond localized initiatives, championed by chapters, chapters, championed by community network actors, are we also going to have major stakeholders contribute towards the community networks movement. I'm sharing a map from association of progressive communication, which shows some of the community network initiatives across Africa. But I must say, the landscape has changed. We need to see more population on this map and I believe it's an opportunity for Africa to take a lead. We still have many parts of our continent that are not meaningfully connected, which hinders our participation as meaningful stakeholders in Internet conversations globally. Some of the milestones and achievements and the trucchi have touched on some of these. In Kenya, we managed to get the community network service provider license in 2021. Through an initiative champion right association of progressive communications through the local network initiative that was hosted by the Kenya ICT Action Network With the support of HCdo. We've also had successes in Uganda. We've had successes in Zimbabwe. We've had successes in Lesotho I heard about this most recently. There is a lot of work going on in Kenya, and I'm sure you can add your country to the list. Efforts are underway. To ensure that community networks are recognized through relevant policy frameworks in South Africa. I know there are many colleagues on the call from South Africa whom we are sharing knowledge. What we can do is look at countries that have done it and just share some of the best practices. Again number of community networks is growing across the continent. There is increasing awareness among policies in structure players, resulting in more last mile access</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>to me just Yeah, so as I head towards the tail</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>end of my conclusion, let me just touch on some of the opportunities that community networks are likely to present to the African Internet community. One we are seeing increasing support from government regulatory agencies, resulting in allocation of more resources and prioritization of last mile connectivity. In many of our African countries. The Universal Service Fund, which is an agreed fund globally, is not being used optimally, because sometimes we don't know what to do with it. So it is at the mercy of politicians. And I think we can change the narrative by taking control of issues of last mile access. Again, increasing awareness on the digital value chain, thanks to the pandemic that was brought about by COVID is also creating a big opportunity for community networks. There is increasing digital literacy owing to an increase in the number of actors involved in the digital ecosystem. from civil society to academia. In Kenya, we now have over 5000 government services online. It doesn't whether you are literate or illiterate if you want a government service to go online. And we all know that government is the largest catalyst for business and many other activities and therefore, we have to make sure that our community members are connected there's also enactment of futuristic policies that support digitization and digitalization. We have a lot of work around artificial intelligence. We have a lot of work around common markets. We have a lot of work around digital public infrastructure and data protection. Unfortunately, we are driven. So these are driven by what's happening in the global north, because most of the African countries are their business partners. But I think we need to change the narrative so that we are the ones who are driving these conversations on account of the benefits that our citizens are actually getting. Last but not least localization of Internet traffic and an increase in data centers is also creating a case for more local content, and more localized community network. In fact, I dare say a colleague was sharing with me that in the near future, might cost zero to buy Internet. What</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>people will be paying for that service provider providers are providing for them and this is content.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So in Tanzania where the common language is Swahili, I can't go there to sell then that is in</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>English, okay. continent that is in Hindi for lack of a better word.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Let me use an extreme perspective. So we need to consider such issues. Some of the challenges that community networks face are not new to infrastructure providers, cost of equipment for infrastructure deployment. And organizations like the Internet Society, the Association of progressive communications have been at the forefront of supporting some of these infrastructure costs are offloading. But beyond the support the community networks are expected to actually scale or grow on their own. The other issue is cost of operating. This is community networks are basically telecommunication organizations even though they receive favorable terms and therefore they require competent personnel and skills to operate and cannot keep someone as a volunteer for more than three months. So that they will remind you that they have families to feed and you have to provide for them. So cost of operating remains a key consideration. Inadequate power power is a major problem. I have recently participated in a conversation and I have heard that we cannot even host Dr. Ford at our centers simply because of lack of power. They already existing data centers when we have national blackouts or challenges or those count kind really suffer and some of the big tech are shying away from having local hosting, cost of bandwidth I think the moment our governments realized the benefit of the Internet, in more people going online, they also saw it as an opportunity to tax us more. And I think this is a conversation that we need to have with our governments some of us will end up as members of parliament let's take these conversations in those environments are inappropriate network designs. Inasmuch as we are talking about alternative forms of access. It's very important to recognize the fact that cost one of the biggest factors of cost of Internet is transit charges. If we're able to keep this traffic within our communities or locally, then we should do it and I think for Internet exchange points, I think the call is a spread yourselves out to try and help with this initiative of keeping local traffic as local as possible, and also encouraging service providers for profit or not for profit to collaborate and to identify areas of synergy. Again, the issue of weak communities of practice of Cedric talked about network operator groups, we need more of this we need to localize or realize if there is anything like that. We also need national DNS fora that will expose our citizens to the benefits of the Internet value chain it must not be in English it can be done in local language. Yes, it can be done in whatever language is but we must speak a language that our people be able to identify with. Forgive me for speaking like a politician.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>commendations to Internet Regional Internet Registries</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>specifically AfriNIC. We need a policy framework that allows community networks to access resources. I think there's the benefit in having those resources. I know AS number have tried to access resources from AfriNIC and sometimes the cost is out of reach. So if this is something that can be considered, and the goal is to make sure that we connect as many people as possible. The other issue is training to community network operators to ensure the resources are optimally used. A lot is being done by the Internet Society and there are courses that are coming up on the eighth of April. Allow me to of course, I'm one of the instructors. Please sign up and when you sign up, stay until the end. Don't drop off. Forecasts on value based training, support to communities of practice that support interdependence. And reuse of resources. We need to cooperate and collaborate more not fight over resources, yet we are operating in the same communities. Some of the recommendations to ccTLDs and other TLDs is to onboard community networks as registrar's to foster collaboration with community networks that will build local Internet value chains, collaboration with community networks to train end users, and conducting DNS capacity building programs in collaboration and community networks to increase the number of registered domain names are the last mile. That brings me to the end. of my presentation. And back to you Mr. Chair. Thank you so much, Barack.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>That's fascinating conversation. And I should acknowledge I'm the founder of the Tanzania community network Alliance. Which is currently supporting our four community network in Tanzania. They won in Condor mother in kazoo Kigoma the third one is in Yassa rovuma and the fourth one is in Theremin and make sure that we have more and more community network cooperatives to connect the unconnected populations. Next to the podium is our use of friend Benson, who will be sharing to Ross what they're doing and how they're working to address the Internet deployments in Tanzania what comes in.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you very much. Give me a second to share.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I should also appreciate the active participation</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>of the participants. It's almost one hour and the numbers are still constant and more and more people are joining to the conversation. So this shows that people are active and following up. You can just sign the feedback in the chat and then we can proceed in engaging the conversation will come up as soon as Ben swan is connecting we can I should also encourage partners to take a few questions in the chat, a QA chat so that you can just respond. I have seen Mutsuki responding to some of these questions. I also encourage more questions to be sent to us during from the QA chats and also encourage panelists to respond to these questions as we are waiting to hear from Benson welcome Benson. I see your screen. We can make it in my slides. Okay. Thank you very much.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you, Tom. So the slides will be available. Is it full screen? Oh can you make it in a full screen? Not yet.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>While Ben swan is connecting maybe I have one question to you, or barrack, which I think is very important to what you have shared. How do you foster foster community engagement and ownership in the Internet development project within community network especial are considering the reliance on volunteer efforts. And then you can also share a successful example of unconventional solution or an alternative technologies that can can address some of these issues that we have pointed out. I have seen you also pointed out the issue of maybe paying funding on the community network and the resilience but also you can also share us in terms of Internet access in remote or challenging areas. What is your experience? Maybe you can take one or more minutes and then we give Benson tries to proceed. Thank you very much Matagorda.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I think one of the of the of what I would one of the best practices is just to talk about our problems. As we are doing. If you look in the past a lot of the investment in Internet and telecommunications within the global south or Sub Saharan Africa, whichever way you want to call it, there is very little investment from locals. But the tide is changing because we are understanding the benefit and we are seeing the narrative. And this is happening because whenever we have opportunities such as this, we are able to talk about them. Initially when this conversation started, community networks were viewed as competitors to the mainstream operators. But over time, it has been established that community networks are not competitors, but they actually complement the mainstream operators actually, you need the mainstream operators to be able to provide the connectivity at the last mile and we are able to save the mainstream operators the cost of setting up shop in the community and running up in the community day and night so that they can focus on routine, other core functions of making sure that they bring us the capacity from subsea cables to the community level. I think the other issue is we have had a lot of affirmative action from our governments supporting different initiatives such as water, to say the least, and I think most of our governments are now aware of the increasing benefit of the Internet. Or basically information and communications technology. And investing in infrastructure is a deep pit no single organization can be able to do it on its own. So we need a multiplicity of investments whether from government, whether from development organizations, to make sure that we have suitable infrastructure beyond deployment, the infrastructure also has to be protected and the infrastructure also needs to be used. So I would say that these are some of the issues that I consider to be important. I think for community networks, especially those that are acting you will read the comment you conduct community and they take you take money from them, then you have a legal and moral obligation to provide a service just like any other international organization that will be providing a service. So we need to think through and as Mitsuki had mentioned, there's a cost known as community network readiness assessment. There is a tool that has been developed in that particular cost that can enable you to develop a business plan that can enable you to come up with a cost benefit analysis scenario that will tell you whether you are ready or not to deploy community network it will also teach you how to conduct stakeholder engagement to make sure that you have the support of the community, the government and all the key actors for optimum success of your community network. Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much. I appreciate your feedback. And Benson with</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>kindly proceed. Thank you. Okay, thank you for feedback. sites</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>are visible now. So I'll talk a little bit about the IETF which stands for the Internet Engineering Task Force. And this kind of gives a brief outline of the presentation. So I'll give you a quick introduction, some history where the IETF needs. So Internet is allows you to do lots</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>of things remotely.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Face to face interaction is actually also quite helpful. Some of the impact it has had and how you can participate. So unlike a lot of the other organizations, a lot of the work that the IETF does, can be done remotely. And it would be one way that one can participate in how the Internet is developed. So as I said, it's</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>called the Internet Engineering Task Force. And the main thing</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>it does is it creates an environment where people can participate in the development of standards.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Everything is done with email, the primary mechanisms of communication and the standards are available for you also openly to read.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>They have standards for most of the protocols that are used on the Internet and in particular, if you're interested in developing new standards, it's a good place to get involved. The website is there. I'll go</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>to that towards the end.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So let's first meeting was held in 1986. And it was evolved out of the USA funded research project which is known as opera net. So there was kind of attempt at networking computers before and to be able to do this successfully you kind of have to agree to communicate.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>And this kind of grew out of that and has grown further</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>into 90s.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So it's actually similar kinds of technologies</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>called Minitel. And this was developed mostly in France and has spread to other parts of Europe. It initially was deployed as a television sets and allowed kind of sending those things like newspaper articles, bulletin boards chatter as so kind of a prerunner Internet as you know it today, but using significantly lower number of ways to communicate. While the IETF kind of started in USA present, there's a lot of active participation from Europe and Asia. And this is not just from people selling hardware, but also it will be operating services. So many of the large corporations have helped run Internet services or build on top of the Internet are interested in the standards that are used and participate in this. So if you take a look at the meeting locations, kind of what you see here is a plot of the world. And each dot kind of indicates a previous meeting location. A lot of them are customer USA. It's started there. So that's that's not surprising. This one here is Hawaii. This</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>has been to haven't quite added that yet, but that would appear here.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>And has had number of meetings in Japan, Asia, nothing in Africa yet. And in Europe, so this kind of large part of world where I guess infrastructure operators have not gone to see what conditions are available. Um so</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>the way the ITF operated producers what they call request for comments. So the standards are not things which you're forced to abide by.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Because it's something that's done globally. Even if you look at say for example, something like the United Nations, they they issue also recommendations and then people can voluntarily choose to abide by these because it's very hard to enforce these legally. So if we look at the number of RFC since 2019. So this is when they first started adding or having an option to add the country in which you're based</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>when you submit</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>RFC which is kind of an Internet Protocol proposal with most of</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>the significant activity also from Canada, India,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>China. Japan bookplate has many. Here we see Spain, United Kingdom, Italy. In terms of Africa we have here there's one from</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Morocco and it also Mauritius. I think the line here putting directly is I'd seen from one of the earlier slides, Mauritius is actually over here. That's just enlarge just because I was able to show up on this map. So we've had quite a number of RFCs from Mauritius, of the rest of Africa, we're not really involved in designing the protocols that we want to use for the Internet. And if we want to be sure that the Internet works well for local conditions, we should participate more and be seen to participate more. There's been quite a number of from America and they've had like one meeting there. That it'd be good to be active in this area.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So so well. It's free to participate online</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>does actually cost quite some money to go places. And some people actually quite vocal about that. So IETF 116, which was in Yokohama and you can see that had the US who had to fly there and attend that meeting in Bristol. But also the number of local attendants from Japan is actually very high, which is quite good. And when you do have kind of activities related to instead development it's helpful to participates when you have a chance to do so and influence that tends to be much easier than many other venues. People are friendly and generally happy to talk about technology.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Next one can attendance from very high</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>this time not quite so many from Japan but still reasonable number of people so when things are local more people can go this is always a good thing. We see that some attendants from South Africa and also from Kenya. made a slight mistake here in doing the plot. Now this should be from New Zealand, which is here</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>next one was a product so IETF tries to follow a policy</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>where they can rotate their meetings they hold three per year. So they try to rotate them at the moment between basically North America, Europe and Asia.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>This kind of some efforts to</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>modify these policies. So this one again this person from Kenya, not so much on South Africa. Um</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Australia, New Zealand again New Zealand, fairly large number of people from China. So</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>expect many of you will have routers, things which also come from China. So the standards for these kind of communication devices typically developed here. And because the current one does but here which is Western some to continue, see that there's people who come from fairly remote places and attend these meetings and participate in the development. So you don't necessarily have to be in like Silicon Valley to be able to participate in the development of the Internet. So typical things that have been developed here, HTTPS so whenever you go to a website and you see that it's secured, there's a protocol that determines how your information is going to be transmitted to your web browser. If you're a network operator, and you have Internet traffic that's moving. This is what is used. ipv6 currently is efforts to migrate from ipv4. So typically you don't have many years to say that to DNS at the moment, many people using ipv4 and there's interest in moving to ipv6 which has some security benefits and has much larger address space. So the ipv4 spaces being exhausted and open PGP. So if you want to do signing of email, or encrypting of email, these RFCs kind of describe how that is done. And you can actually go and look them up in there. And this is very helpful for interoperability. If you're building software systems, I many times you want to interoperate with people elsewhere.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So you can run some of the things internally but typically, for example,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>you have, say an Android device and as a web browser you want to be sure that Android device can communicate with your server. So you need to check that the protocols used are kind of agreed upon and make sense for you. So this is why it's important to participate in these kinds of things. So it does take time.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So especially those of you associated with educational institutions,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>there's lots of opportunity to participate online students</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>and as universities are kind of some of the first</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>places to come online. This is kind of a good way to show the power of the Internet. Said you sent him a mailing list. So many of the meetings also participate remotely. So that's what I have done so far. And there's an option to participate without paying but if you can, then it's also to support by pain and also other things which is research group. So I showed RFCs which are kind of Internet standards, which is measurable output. But for example, this global access to the Internet for all there's a lot of interesting discussions about people who are measuring Internet resilience, using Internet of Things to improve their local communities. So measuring things like pollution, water quality. So these are all kinds of interesting places to learn. New technologies and build upon them.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So the code associated security is</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>available in my repository. So that should be available to you later. And</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I'll just show the website for the monitor</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>more than less, if you're interested in seeing that you can</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>sign up and watch a few things tomorrow. guess is it in Australia at the</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>moment? Have you just go in and see for example, the job</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>because at the moment I'm logged in</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>so take a few minutes sorry, well connection</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>um reasonable people sparsely populated areas.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Do not have.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>But then suddenly we can't hear you. Well, maybe you check for my voice is not clear</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Can you hear me? Yes. Someone good. Okay, done. So I've just put a link to your website in the chat. And you can take a look at that</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>in your own time. So thank you very much for your attention. I'd be happy to answer any questions if there are any. Thank you so much.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I think you presented a very important discussion and it took me to a few more questions to you and maybe understand what can we do to improve the situation? Or maybe Benson waited to a knowledge</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I've seen to present it</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>or the participation of various regions to IETF activities. And I have noted that Africa has very low participation are the primary challenges that he wants to buted the role participation of African stakeholder in the ITF activities and how can these challenges be addressed of account?</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Okay, so thank you for your question. So I think first a lot of people are not online all the time and</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>kind of developing standards is not going to be the primary purpose of people who are maybe DirectAccess ly interested just in business or using the Internet for commerce or for using other platforms that people have developed. But once you say start developing infrastructure yourself. So for example, telecom, which has deployed a lot of fiber</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>has actively participated in IETF primarily because I think they got to the point where these are challenges in some of the protocols that are being used. In Kenya, for example, we have m PESA, which is primarily built on mobile phones. But if you China,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>they use Ali pay a lot of them</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>and they need to be sure that their Internet infrastructure which this is running over,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>that works reasonably</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>well for that kind of service. So I think we need to see maybe some of the bigger players who, I guess, I guess we talked mentioned about setting up data centers. In some sense, this restaurant is like a factory in the sense that you go out and you buy servers and you set them up. It's a little bit more well understood. That if you start to have several different kinds of data centers, and you need to interconnect them, they need to start worrying more about the underlying infrastructure if you have people wanting to do payments, so for example, as mentioned, that is a lot of government services offered over the Internet. Then you need to worry about is how you're going to identify people, or the protocols you're using secure for that. So this is an area where we need maybe some some of the people either in universities are funded by the government doing research on these kinds of things. Taking an active participation. I think Nigeria for example, many people get recognized for academic publications. They will not ask</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>for helping improve Internet standards.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>That if you are specializing in an area and you doing research in an area, you actually want that research also to end up in a practical situation. And so encouraging even master's students to participate because they can do so remotely would be a good thing. They will get feedback from international audience that recognition. They'll get to interact with people at global companies. And because also the materials are openly available, if you have an Internet connection, you can download them and read them. Much academic research is behind paywalls so this is harder to do. So I think having people also be willing to participate either as companies. Or for example, if you're developing community networks. Just doing measurements and reporting your measurements through these kinds of fora allows you to get access to people who are developing new protocols and deploy them ahead of time test them out on a small scale. Something useful so you</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>so that people for example, very interested in doing audio coding.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>This is one thing I guess COVID has pushed and they realize that not everybody is going to be on a high bandwidth connection and they still need to interoperate. So these are some areas where it's possible to increase participant but increase your knowledge level. The payoff is usually not immediate. But it's something that's needed for sustainable use of the Internet.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>So I hope that answered your question. Dr. Rivera. Thank you so much. I've also put</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>a chart in to the in the chat where I said, is that just like a call to action for academia in the composition country? In cardio to graduate students to actively participates to IETF activity that and actual could find their research gaps are aligned within IETF activities. These will push more active participation, more region thing that will also be a better a better way to increase the African participation and hope we're nearly to the end of the conversation. Give one more minute for each of the panelists to just summarize what you have presented and possibly, if you have any call to action from the from this conversation. Start with Cedric.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you, Dr. autoguru. And thank you to all</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>my fellow panelists, too. I was really honored to be part of such a great panel. And I will say that we are AfriNIC we have a lot of Internet development initiatives. And one thing that you have to remember and to take into consideration is that we cannot do that all by ourselves. Cooperation is cooperation and collaboration is something very important. And that's the reason why you will see that AfriNIC will partner with organizations such as Internet Society ftld pch, for instance, Makiki is part of the people that we are working a lot with in initiatives such as I experienced, we don't want to compete we want to work together because our goal and our objective is the same to developing Internet in the continent. So we want to I encourage anybody who wants to reach out to us, you can either send an email to that at AfriNIC dotnet, or engagement at AfriNIC dotnet. And we will be more than happy to collaborate with you to support you and don't hesitate to reach out to us even if you have already reached out to all the organization. Remember, we are all working together. So don't look at us as competitors. We are all part of the great Internet ecosystem. Thank you. And back to you Dr. Mehta. Girl. Thank you so much Miss, I'm shooting and I come after Cedric and</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>sounds like he's covered everything. But I said essentially what I would encourage you to understand that a lot of the work that happens over the Internet is largely because of community. And I think we've talked about community networks. We've talked about network operator groups of the IETF all these are</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>communities.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Communities of Practice where these particular interest you volunteer your time, your resources towards an issue that is of interest to you, and then pursue that through those communities. The ISOC chapters I've seen questions about ISOC chapters, those are also communities. So dedicate some time some of your time towards a particular area of interest, contribute your time your resources, read about it, research about it green contributions, things. The only way you'll be able to move something forward. So we talk a lot about things but it's a question of what are you going to go and do about it? Being able to commit sacrifice your time towards a particular issue that is, you know, either a gap you've identified whether it's bringing more people, connectivity to those who are underserved, whether it's a policy advocacy issue that needs time and research and engagement with various stakeholders, whether it's an issue of the IETF where we are talking about protocol development, that know somebody's time and commitment so all the issues we've talked about today, the question of you taking the initiative to support that.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>They have the the community mailing list, where there are certain issues</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>that are also discussed all these issues really do require active engagement, collaboration, and, and that's the only way we can make things move forward. So my call to action to you is of the things we've covered today. What touches you the most, where do you feel you could be able to bring the most contribution? Connect with those individuals, ask for information, guidance, and put your time and resources behind it. And surely at the end of it, you will see some impact. So much Mitsuki Benson,</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>maybe that's second because time is not in sight. I'm so thank you very much for the opportunity.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>I guess it was very helpful learning about the infrastructure. A hope to have Okay, so I'll just adjust it for those people who are developing community networks. IETF is a good place to learn about things. There's especially active groups on Internet of things. And I think a lot of security for this is being spearheaded by AfriNIC so all those six RFCs which came from Mauritius, they actually also seated to</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>so I can try and maybe share a link to the</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>working group that he's leading. But then any other business people are aware of the Internet is a big thing. And there's lots of technologies. So thank you. Thank you so much. Benson in</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>32nd is not on our end.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Thank you. metaverse. My clarion</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>call is for all of us to see how we can go beyond focusing solely on infrastructure to increase in meaningful usage of the Internet in our communities. Thank you again for listening. Thank you metaverse for listening to us and for leading us and therefore to my fellow panelists for the insightful presentations. I should take one comment from how it a</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>poodle who said Mitch to K. Internet Society has been instrumental for the growth of unity network in Kenya ports to ISOC Kenya and membership with community nature now five bucks so yesterday in brunette community sabe community 40 meters from Rex to Atlanta around their community network with 1/3 Seven Mbps Wow such achievement, congratulation, Kenya and up there maybe as you were winding up. I should also welcome you to our next webinar, which is titled African Internet exchange two stories. exp which will be in French. This webinar will take place on fourth April 24 at 10am UTC. This webinar will explore the history challenges and opportunities facing African dinette. Excellent point as well as they are all then approaching digital transformation across the continent is very webinar we strive to improve your experience. The end of this webinar, a survey will pop up on your screen then you can just give us your your feedback. Only thing we are going to ask is for you fill in the survey to help us make the experience in AfriNIC webinar in beta two would also be nice to get reading from from you please pay me to complete the survey. Thank you so much. And I really optische for the active engagement and I hope to meet you again in the next conversation.</h4><h4 _ngcontent-otter-web-c2520555482>Then do have the survey stopped</h4></div> <link rel="stylesheet" href="//embed.typeform.com/next/css/sidetab.css"> <div class="__tailwind__" id="den-portal-container" style="z-index: 950; position: relative"></div> <script src="https://assets.otter.ai/runtime.12346d086844a024.js" type="module"></script><script src="https://assets.otter.ai/polyfills.aa9b0deaf55439a1.js" type="module"></script><script src="https://assets.otter.ai/main.d0052e992f04405c.js" type="module"></script> <div class="cdk-live-announcer-element cdk-visually-hidden" aria-atomic="true" aria-live="polite" id="cdk-live-announcer-0"></div><script id="otter-web-state" type="application/json">{"SSR_SPEECH":{"type":"SSRSpeech","url":"/u/H9e5tRbOr3JhecqXpBvXbfh18ow?utm_source=copy_url&tab=chat","host":"https://otter.ai","otid":"H9e5tRbOr3JhecqXpBvXbfh18ow","isOLN":false}}</script></body></html>