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2009 MESSAGE FROM AFRISPA'S EXECUTIVE BOARD |
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Written by Sheba Kimani
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Over the year, AfrISPA has gained global significance by her work in lobbying for liberalisation of the telecoms market in Africa backed by efforts in establishing ISP Associations and the building of Internet eXchange Points as part of Africa's Internet Infrastructure. Much progress has been made in the understanding within policymakers, regulators and political leaders as it was enshrine in the World Summit on Information Society’s Plan of Action that "governments should facilitate the establishment of national and regional exchange centres”. All of these happened under a virtual institutional structure for AfrISPA and going forward this posed a risk to the scaling of such efforts. .
Over the year, AfrISPA has gained global significance by her work in lobbying for liberalisation of the telecoms market in Africa backed by efforts in establishing ISP Associations and the building of Internet eXchange Points as part of Africa's Internet Infrastructure. Much progress has been made in the understanding within policymakers, regulators and political leaders as it was enshrine in the World Summit on Information Society’s Plan of Action that "governments should facilitate the establishment of national and regional exchange centres”. All of these happened under a virtual institutional structure for AfrISPA and going forward this posed a risk to the scaling of such efforts. In 2007, we resolved to look at the issue of sustainability by addressing the core need for institutional reform to place the organisation on a better platform. Much of the internal soul searching pointed to the need for a formal secretariat which would co‐ ordinate and administer a series of valued propositions to members who would in turn commit more financial resources to the organisation. It was also clear the organisation needed to be looking at itself as a business concern which must deliver a service in exchange for cash. Our Strategic and Sustainability Plan which was developed as a result of this exercise outlines the clear lines of engagement which we have being doing in 2008‐ our year of greater works. The year 2009 calls for us to take the elements of the past and build it up to another level hence the theme "Sustainability for greater Significance". Our secretariat will be fully functional in Nairobi, Kenya with a team of three, lead by the General Manager and made up of the Programme Officer and the Head of Policy. They would be backed by a part‐time team of consultants who would lead our En‐ISPA and AfiX Teams. We hope to establish an R&D Department with a fulltime head at the secretariat. IDRC has expressed interest in working with us to get this going as it would help with the ISPs and ISPAs as much of them do not have R&D units to scale future developments. We would focus on establishing more ISPAs and IXPs and broaden our constituency to include mobile operators, BPO operators at the national level. Our African Internet exchange System (AXIS) which has been short listed as the lead AU/EU flagship project on their Information Society and Science Programme for Africa, would get going with the development of the framework for connecting exchanges in the sub‐regions. As a matter of urgency, we are going to move forward with the establishment of the EARPTO Regional IXP in East Africa which is going to connect the IXPs in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. This would grow to include Rwanda and Burundi where we hope to establish an IXP this year. Our policy work would move to another level with the appointment of a substantial officer to ensure that we can deal with issues around Internet user’s privacy, freedom of expression online, net neutrality, child pornography, cybercrime etc. We hope to collaborate with other institutions to advance these causes. |
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Last Updated ( Monday, 06 April 2009 )
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