By Avit NDAYIZIGA
About 261 people gathered to discuss policies to take the Internet to the next level in Africa through open policy development process during the AFRINIC-31 Fellowship in Luanda Angola, from 2nd-6th December.
Every year, the AFRINIC (African Network Communication Center) organizes an open meeting for its resources members, partners, delegates, fellows as well as the community members for capacity building and for internet policy development discussion process. This year, the theme is to take the African Internet to the next level through open policy development process by collaboration and Education.
In his poignant and outstanding remark, the current CEO of AFRINIC Mr Eddy Kayihura mentioned that African continent uses 40% of internet IP address resources comparing to the 57% of the rest of the World. More importantly, 47% of African internet users are trying the transition from IPV4 to IPV6 but only2.3% uptake now the IPV6.
During the opening ceremony, the Angolan Minister of Telecommunication and information technology Minister Jose Carvalho da Rocha stated that Internet is the most reliable resource to implement the 2030 Agenda designed by United Nations to reach out sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, Angola is lagging behind in the Internet utilization by only 23% of the population who have access to the Internet whereas the current population of Angola is13millions.
For the case of Burundi, approximately 7% of the population has access to the internet as the ARCT (Agency for communication and telecommunication regulation) informed the Minister of Communication and Information Technology in 2018 as it was written by Burundi ECO.
Why AFRINIC?
After the INET workshop in Malaysia in 1997, and the creation of other Internet providers such as: APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE NCC, in April2005, ICANN accredited AFRINIC as the fifth Regional Internet Registry according to criteria defined in its ICP-2 document.’’To serve the African Community by providing professional and efficient management of Internet number technology usage and development, and promoting Internet self-governance.
The upcoming AFRINIC-32 Fellowship will be held in Kinshasa in DRC.
