[council] A New Approach to Africa

[Rafik Dammak]

Hello Alex,

I think that you are conflating different issues and that makes things more
confusing IMHO.
Yes Afrinic can be reformed/improved like any organization, the problem is
board seats are regional based while the nominees to be elected can be not
Afrinic members (if I am not wrong) and there is no provision to have
stakeholder representation, sure that need change but definitely that is
kind of restructuring will take time and lot of efforts. First let's see
how it can be done through existing processes and what is needed to
convince people.afrinic surely can have a review like what happened in
ICANN.

For HR issues, I guess that we should use PDP in Afrinic to develop policy
in those matters and that will definitely create the debate within Afrinic
community (my understanding that Afrinic WGs and policy proposals are open
to everybody) . Let's develop concrete proposals. What do you have in mind
about HR issues related to IP addressing, concrete case can clarify
definitely your point.
for Afircann, it is just mailing list which allowed somehow a kind of
virtual African Internet community , and many announcement are shared there.

Lets focus on more critical topics. It is important to discuss about that
ad hoc working group, it is outside icann now (and no real indication that
afrinic is behind it, the annoucement is confusing about that point) but
when they will send proposal to icann board and CEO, it has to follow Icann
processes and thre is need for community to comment and NCSG must be
active. There were already discussion about representation in the group,
how the selection was made and so on. I will blame more CEO and board
approach while it is based on good will,it is good to have informal
meetings but there is need to be careful to invite everybody from African
attendees in Prague meeting (people felt being exlcuded, not the best way
to start things) and more to follow appropriate processes (we are talking
about strategy that will engage ICANN for years in Africa and investment to
be done there with staff etc). for example, mentioning in icann
announcement that was meeting with African community or work done by
African community is misleading.

I think that bill proposal is good start with and that is concrete action.

Best,

Rafik

Le mardi 14 août 2012, Alex Gakuru a écrit :

> Thanks Milton. Yes it can be fixed through Bylaws changes to Board
> appointment and institutional structural reforms. But only if the BOD
> resolved as such. The alternative would to let them be and Africa's Human
> Rights civil society organisations distance themselves from AFRICANN/NIC
> moves.
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 5:33 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'mueller at syr.edu');>
> > wrote:
>
>>  Well said, Alex. Can this be fixed? ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> *From:* NCSG-Discuss [mailto:NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU');>]
>> *On Behalf Of *Alex Gakuru
>>
>> Mailing lists can/are open but effective policy influence is achieved
>> with representation on the policy making table. Their 6-person BOD
>> structure http://www.afrinic.net/en/our-structure/bod  of Eastern
>> Africa(1), Indian Ocean(1), Northern Africa(1), Western Africa(1), Central
>> Africa(1), Southern Africa(1) are business, ccTLDs and government persons.
>> It does not provide for civil society representatives. Or would I be
>> missing one (including on the listed past) BOD members?
>>
>>  ****
>>
>>
>

-- 
Rafik Dammak
@rafik
"fight for the users"
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