[Ncuc-af] Report: Meeting with ICANN Africa VP during ICANN64

[Ekue Farell Folly]

Good initiative Thato and Joan. Thanks for the well-detailled report.
Looking forward to improving our contribution and the footprint of
Africa within ICANN.
On Tue, 2019-03-19 at 23:10 +0200, Thato Mfikwe wrote:
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> Hi all
> 
> This email serves as a report from a 45-minute meeting that
> was held with ICANN VP of Stakeholder Engagement for Africa, Pierre
> Dandjinou
> during ICANN64 on the 13th of March 2019 and apologies for the long
> message.
> 
> 
> Participants who attended this meeting were Thato Mfikwe (South
> Africa) and Joan Katambi (Uganda), who are both NCUC members. 
> 
> The meeting started with introductions by everyone and before
> and question and answer portion, I also explained the evolution of
> the LACNIC
> region in order to clearly articulate areas of improvement in ICANN
> and
> community regional efforts in contributing more effectively in
> delivery of
> ICANN remit and community activities.
> 
>  
> 
> 1.       Improving regional participation within
> ICANN and the region
> 
> Pierre mentioned that it was important for members to get
> involved in community activities within ICANN and anyone interested
> in
> participating must be able to submit a 1-page document on how they
> have
> impacted or cultivated the ICANN community at regional and national
> level and
> how they would like to further contribute.
> 
> Proposed way forward for improved participation
> 
> -         
> There is a need for an ICANN/AFRICA environment.
> During ICANN65, there will be a slot to discuss the Africa strategy,
> also
> noting that previously Africa never had an engagement platform within
> ICANN.
> 
> -         
> Fadi Chehade, the previous CEO of ICANN, strongly felt
> that Africa is not well represented and treated within ICANN, for
> instance less
> than 1% of gTLDs were allocated to the region out of 100 applications
> and most
> of the allocated were in South Africa. The main problem in this
> regard is that
> Africa did not know about the gTLD program, it is therefore paramount
> that
> Africa outlines their expectations from ICANN.
> 
> -         
> The current Africa strategy plan has 2 proposed pillars:
> 
> 
> o  
> Participation in ICANN’s work
> 
> o  
> Capacity building in the Domain Name industry, a
> proposed campaign is “DNSSEC roadshows” as few ccTLD managers were
> assisted to
> sign the zone file thus far.
> 
> -         
> DNS forums originated in Africa, with the first
> one taking place in Durban, South Africa and now these forums span
> across different
> regions. The advantage of these forums is that they create a platform
> for registrars
> and registries in Africa to collaborate and the next regional DNS
> forum will be
> in Botswana.
> 
> -         
> Law enforcement agency campaigns. These campaigns
> involve mitigation of cyber crime through capacity building of law
> enforcement
> agencies and for purposes of this, ICANN Africa has empowered 12
> registrars
> within the region.
> 
> Lastly, to increase the number of fellowships for F2F
> meetings, SO’s & AC’s are always supported to attend and the
> mechanism has
> been developed within AC/SO’s to receive fellowships. Members must
> take
> leadership positions, actively participate and contribute based on
> the focus of
> different AC’s and SO’s.
> 
> 30% of ICANN F2F meeting attendees come to ICANN through
> fellowships and the rest of the participants come by themselves or
> receive
> support elsewhere. In order to improve regional participation outside
> ICANN’s
> support, there needs to be awareness campaigns targeting regulators
> to support
> participation of local or regional community members. Pierre also
> recognised that
> the current capacity of the Africa engagement office is limited and
> he
> mentioned that currently, plans are under way to double capacity to
> 6, as this
> will help in ensuring ICANN is able to service the entire region to a
> certain
> extend.
> 
>  
> 
>  2.       LACNIC Region background
> 
> According to Pierre, LANCIC has its own hub, whereas Africa’s
> hub is in Istanbul with its engagement centre in Kenya. Another
> advantage the
> LACNIC region has, is that they also have internet houses with RIRs,
> RALOS and
> so on, making it simple for them to collaborate and work together to
> effectively
> contribute in activities of ICANN, while influencing policy direction
> and
> position, especially at community level. LACNIC also participates
> within
> working groups which offer fellowship opportunities.
> 
>  
> 
> 3.       Other opportunities for development in Africa
> 
> Fundraising at regional and national level
> 
> Africa only has the Africa Internet Summit, which takes place
> once a year, which is not sufficient, so then, the African community
> needs to
> start organising itself. Pierre pointed out a need to tap into local
> capacity
> like mobile operators, stakeholders and entities benefitting from the
> domain
> name space, so engagement with them is important to supporting local
> and
> regional initiatives. Also pointed out that the GNSO brings in a lot
> of money
> in ICANN as it encompasses, registries, registrars, the Commercial
> Stakeholder
> Group and RIR’s for instance.
> 
>  
> 
> Capacity building program
> 
> ICANN Africa participates in regional events and have ICANN
> day and specific workshops for registries and registrars, they have
> also
> initiated a youth community, NextGen fellowships and law enforcement
> workshops.
> The question to be answered when it comes to such initiatives is,
> “How do we
> grow them within Africa”.
> 
>  
> 
> AFRISIG
> 
> In response to continued and possible increased support for
> the African School on Internet Governance, Pierre mentioned that
> although they
> have budget limitations, they will continue to support AFRSIG
> financially and
> sending resource people without making promise of increased support.
> 
>  
> 
> National and Global IGF
> 
> They do support, sponsor and participate at regional and
> sub-regional IGFs (5 years ago to date), the problem with national
> IGFs is that
> Africa with 54 countries will mean ICANN committing funds and people
> for every
> request for support which is not viable based on current and
> experienced budget
> challenges within ICANN and the region.
> 
>  
> 
> Community Support and regional participation
> 
> The Africa engagement office currently works with AFRALO
> when opportunity permits. Personally, I
> think we need to learn something from AFRALO in term on how they
> self-structure,
> organise and co-ordinate themselves.
> 
> During ICANN meetings, 15-20 years ago, you would find only 2
> Africans out of 500 participants, the number grew steadily from to 10
> – 15 Africans
> overtime and today we have 40 – 50 regional participants in ICANN
> meetings. This
> is one of the reasons why quality participation has to be always
> promoted within
> the region, like working groups, leadership roles and participation
> in ICANN public
> forums. The good thing about ICANN, is that it creates opportunity
> for
> networking. ICANN localisation with multiple stakeholders is needed
> to prepare
> for participation of members and the regional community need to start
> initiating their own Readout sessions after every ICANN meeting.
> 
>  
> 
>  My recommendation or side input to members
> Initially, we need to consider setting up an online meeting to
> discuss this report and obtain other
> updates and comments. We cannot rely solely on ICANN to resolve
> regional
> challenges, we need to be proactive in creating an enabling
> environment and
> coming up with ideas and projects to see local ideals come to
> fruition.
> 
> We need to organise ourselves and immediate community members to
> ensure that we are well
> represented, treated and our voices are heard within ICANN as
> outlined in the
> report. Below are some of the proposed action steps we can consider:
> 
> a.      
> Development of a concept document on how the
> African strategy can be improved or best executed before ICANN65, to
> be submitted
> of the ICANNN African engagement office and then presented and
> discussed at the
> meeting.
> 
> b.      
> Establishment of a steering committee encompassing
> community members and/or representatives from NCUC in the meantime
> and then
> other ACs and SOs in the medium term, to:                         
> i.      initiate establishment of WGs (policy development,
> community engagements, capacity building, fundraising and etc for
> instance, guided by agreed
> priorities)   
>                          ii.        
> develop an action plan and procedural documents defining
> terms and parameters of participation and engagement amongst other
> activities.
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks for taking time to read, 
> Thato Mfikwe.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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