ICANN Participates in African Multi-stakeholder Internet Governance meeting promising 25 new accredited registrars.
March 2013 has seen ICANN traverse the world to participate with the regional IG community. According to the ICANN website, “These events will be attended by regional leaders from government, the private sector and civil society.”
The first event was part of the Arab IGF initiative, in Dubai, UAE from 3-5 March. The second event, as part of the African Strategic Engagement initiative, was concluded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 6-8 March. ICANN invited in regional leaders and Internet Governance experts from all over the world at these two events and was organized in partnership with African IGF , AfriNIC , AFTLD , ISOC Africa, DotConnectAfrica Registry Services and the ATU.
Speaking at the event, the ICANN CEO affirmed that ICANN would work very hard to achieve its goals, noting the short time that it had to bring activities in its calendar to a close, top of the agenda is the new gTLD program.
He said that “We made a public commitment, that I may regret, that we will try as fast as we can by Durban to at least have some initial answers to facilitate this for the African community, because hopefully with your help and your assistance within a year we won’t be saying we have five accredited registrars, we’ll be saying we have 25.”
This comes in the time that Africa is seeking to have more accredited registrars in order to improve services. The DNS business was a key matter in the event and the agenda focused on : development of the DNS industry and business in Africa, analyzing the multi–‐stakeholder Internet governance model and the African perspectives, where delegates vouched for the identification of the specific roles of that stakeholders.
The youths also were mentioned as instrumental in the achieving of ICANN’s outreach in Africa, Capacity building and the Internet Governance policies, Internet resources Management and securing the Internet were other factors that were elaborated upon.