[kictanet] East Africa prepares for global Internet Governance Forum By Rebecca Wanjiku.

[alice at apc.org]

East Africa prepares for global Internet Governance Forum
By Rebecca Wanjiku, IDG News Service\Nairobi Bureau
10 Nov, 2008

Representatives from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda gathered in
Nairobi to discuss common issues regarding Internet governance in
preparation for next month's global Internet Governance Forum.

The discussions began at the national level, with each country identifying
its unique issues with a view toward developing a regional position,
explained Alice Munyua, coordinator of the Kenya ICT Action Network.

"The country networks collected and collated the salient issues, which
will be presented to the regional forum," she said. "The regional report
will be presented to the leaders attending the IGF forum in India as the
governance issues concerning the region."

Developing countries are under-represented in Internet governance,
according to Edith Adera from the International Development Research
Council, who provided financial support for the regional event.

Meeting participants identified the major issues affecting East Africa as
high connectivity costs, lack of ICT infrastructure, cybersecurity,
privacy, data protection, management of country code top-level domains,
presence of local root servers and lack of enhanced legislation

In regard to infrastructure, East African governments have demonstrated
commitment by investing in submarine cables and terrestrial fiber, noted
Bitange Ndemo, Kenya's permanent secretary in the Ministry of Information
and Communication.

By next November, he said, countries should be debating issues of too much
bandwidth and the darker issues of the Internet, such as cybercrime.

Participants from the four countries voiced their concerns over the
consistency and reliability of technology, arguing that system failures
cause a loss of business for which business owners are not compensated.

Ndemo, however, challenged participants to first address issues of online
content, adding that the cost of Internet will only fall if people can
access local, as opposed to international, content.

"It will be criminal for Google.com to come all the way from California to
digitize our books while we have unemployed graduates in the streets,"
Ndemo said. "We have so much knowledge to convert to digital format."