The 6th AfIGF will be held from 4-6 December 2017 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
The Internet Governance Forum
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a platform for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on prevailing and emerging issues on Internet governance ecosystem. The IGF mandate was extended for ten years by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 2015. IGF aims at fostering the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and the development of the Internet, thus facilitating content development and access to information and knowledge. Africa’s contribution to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process has led to the formation of the African Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF) in September 2011.
The African Internet Governance Forum
Presently, there are regional Internet Governance Forum initiatives in all the five regions of Africa. In order to bring together the national IGF initiatives together with the regional ones and to promote IG related issues on the continent, there was a strong need for the establishment of an African Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF). Accordingly, AfIGF was convened by the sub-regional IGFs in cooperation with the African Union Commission (AUC) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) at the 6th IGF in Nairobi, Kenya. The AfIGF was formally launched on 30 September 2011.
Internet Society’s Activities:
- Monday Dec 4 2017: Presentation on Community Networks, Dawit Bekele, Regional Bureau Director for Africa
- Tuesday Dec 5 2017: Presentation on Promoting the African Internet Economy, Dawit Bekele, Regional Bureau Director for Africa
- Wednesday Dec 6 2017: Presentation on the Future of the Internet Report
The AfIGF events
Following a bid floated by the AfIGF secretariat, which was based at ECA up to 2014, the various AfIGF sessions were successfully held in:
- Egypt, from 2 – 4 October 2012;
- Kenya, from 24 – 26 September 2013;
- Nigeria, from 10-12 July 2014;
- Ethiopia, from 6-8 September 2015, and
- South Africa, from 16-18 October 2016
