East Africa prepares for global Internet Governance Forum

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."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.