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Public Comment CloseStatement
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10 September 2018

Draft ICANN Africa Strategic Plan 2016-2020 Version 3.0

ADOPTED

13Y, 1A, 0N

Fatimata Seye Sylla

07 September 2018

10 September 2018

11 September 2018

14 September 2018

10 September 2018

Pierre Dandjinou
queries.nairobiec@icann.org

AL-ALAC-ST-0918-01-01-EN

Hide the information below, please click here 

Brief Overview

Purpose: On July 2, 2018; the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) Africa team convened a select committee of Supporting Organization (SO) / Advisory Committee (AC) representatives from Africa to review the current Africa strategy. They came up with a draft reviewed document ICANN Africa Strategy Ver 3.0 2016 – 2020. This public comment proceeding is seeking further input from the community on the draft document in line with our commitment to inclusive bottom-up and multistakeholder approach.

Current Status: The Africa strategy was one of the first ever regional plans approved by ICANNorg. The strategy document itself is a living document and should be flexible enough to respond to the changing needs and prevailing circumstance of the community. Hence the need for this regular review and appraisal to ensure that ICANN Org, and indeed the Africa Strategy is responsive to the community in conformance to the overall Mission and remit of ICANNorganization (org.) The first review was done by the community in November 2014 and resulted in the current ICANN Africa Strategy Ver 2.0 2016 – 2020. ICANN has since undergone important transformations in the last 3 years such as the IANA stewardship transition (October 2016) that led to introduction of new ICANN Bylaws and created an Empowered Community of ICANN. It was therefore important to revisit the Africa Strategy to realign it to these new realities at ICANN org.

Next Steps: ICANN org. will consolidate the comments, generate an updated strategy document as per the comments and formally re-launch the reviewed ICANN – Africa Strategic Plan FY16 – FY20 at the upcoming ICANN63 meeting.

Section I: Description and Explanation

In June 2012, the African community had a historic meeting in Prague, Czech Republic (ICANN44) that was chaired by Steve Crocker (then chairman of ICANN Board), Fadi Chehade (ICANN’s incoming CEO at that time) and Moctar Yedaly from the African Union Commission. The outcome was a new approach to Africa that would focus on the following action lines:

  • Develop a framework for ICANN's Africa strategy
  • Support stronger presence for ICANN in Africa
  • Increase Africa's participation in ICANN

The Africa Strategy Working Group (ASWG) which was set up during the meeting came up with the Africa Strategy document (2012 - 2015) which was presented during ICANN45 in Toronto. The document has now become the cornerstone of ICANN’s engagement in Africa. Implementation of the strategy started in 2013, with the recruitment of the Vice President (VP) for Africa and with a few key flagship projects. The Africa team has now grown with further recruitment of two more managers.

The initial 3-year Africa Strategic Plan encompassed ICANN’s overall delivery in Africa, which boils down to capacity development in the DNS industry and business, capacitating African ccTLDs, securing the DNS system in Africa and equally importantly, deepening and broadening engagement with all stakeholders including governments, private sector, academia and civil society in Africa. In 2014, ICANN org. reviewed its global strategic plan to a new ICANN 2016 – 2020 Strategic plan focused on 5 key pillars / Strategic Objectives. This occasioned the first review of the Africa Strategy in November 2014 to align it to the ICANN overall strategy.

Section II: Background

On May 5, 2018, the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) Africa team officially released the 5-Year implementation report of the ICANN Africa strategy in Dakar, Senegal in the sidelines of Africa Internet Summit (AIS) 2018. It has been five years since the first ICANN Africa Strategic Plan 2012 – 2015.

The strategy identified 8 strategic objectives, which were eventually, translated into more than a hundred projects to be rolled out in a period of three years. The overall goal of the strategy being a transformation of Africa into a contributor to the Internet and an emerging market for the domain name business and industry. In 2014, ICANN org. released a new strategic plan. It was therefore imperative that the Africa Strategy be aligned with the overall ICANN strategic focus. This necessitated the first review meeting convened by the GSE Africa team in in November 24-25, 2014.The result of the review meeting was the adoption of the current updated ICANN Africa Strategic plan Ver2.0 FY16 – 20.

Section III: Relevant Resources



Section IV: Additional Information

Section V: Reports


FINAL VERSION SUBMITTED (IF RATIFIED)

The final version to be submitted, if the draft is ratified, will be placed here by upon completion of the vote. 


FINAL DRAFT VERSION TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ALAC

The final draft version to be voted upon by the ALAC will be placed here before the vote is to begin.

10 September 2018


The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Draft ICANN Africa Strategic Plan 2016-2020 Version 3.0.


The main objective of the strategic plan is to strengthen the physical presence in Africa to conduct outreach and help reflect ICANN’s global image via the regionalization of core ICANN operations. However, the draft raises some concerns about the feasibility of this plan.


The ICANN regional office is understaffed to conduct the activities recommended in the draft: Only one staff member is in Nairobi.


Among the recommendations outlined, the most important cannot be implemented without human resources to promote local engagement and strengthen ICANN operations within Africa. An increased number of African ICANN staff has to be seriously considered, taking into account diversity and gender equity.


In addition, involving more African participation in strategy planning and subsequent implementation review would help increase the number of Africans able to undertake awareness campaigns in their local communities.


Capacity building at the local level should be supported by ICANN and the local private sector, which is currently not very active within ICANN.


African participation within ICANN constituencies should be strengthened. Africa is well represented within the At-Large community and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), but not within other SOs and ACs.


Finally, some recommendations in the strategy do not have a suggested path for implementation. For example:


4. Produce Targeted Documents in appropriate languages regarding ICANN operations (AU Languages)


5. Deploy & Support Anycast Instances in cooperation with regional organizations


There are no comments on how to implement; no indicators (p.11).

The African community within At-Large is willing to contribute to the definition of the implementation strategies of these recommendations.


DRAFT SUBMITTED FOR DISCUSSION

The first draft submitted will be placed here before the call for comments begins. The Draft should be preceded by the name of the person submitting the draft and the date/time. If, during the discussion, the draft is revised, the older version(S) should be left in place and the new version along with a header line identifying the drafter and date/time should be placed above the older version(s), separated by a Horizontal Rule (available + Insert More Content control).

06 September 2018

The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Draft ICANN Africa Strategic Plan 2016-2020 Version 3.0.

The main objective of the strategic plan is to strengthen the physical presence in Africa to conduct outreach and help reflect ICANN’s global image via the regionalization of core ICANN operations. However, the draft raises some concerns about the feasibility of this plan.

The ICANN regional office is understaffed to conduct the activities recommended in the draft: Only one staff member is in Nairobi.

Among the recommendations outlined, the most important cannot be implemented without human resources to promote local engagement and strengthen ICANN operations within Africa. An increased number of African ICANN staff has to be seriously considered, taking into account diversity and gender equity.

In addition, involving more African participation in strategy planning and subsequent implementation review would help increase the number of Africans able to undertake awareness campaigns in their local communities.

Capacity building at the local level should be supported by ICANN and the local private sector, which is currently not very active within ICANN.

African participation within ICANN constituencies should be strengthened. Africa is well represented within the At-Large community and the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), but not within other SOs and ACs.

Finally, some recommendations in the strategy do not have a suggested path for implementation. For example:

4. Produce Targeted Documents in appropriate languages regarding ICANN operations (AU Languages)

5. Deploy & Support Anycast Instances in cooperation with regional organizations

There are no comments on how to implement; no indicators (p.11).


3 Comments

  1. Krishna Seeburn

    Good comments and suggestions. As we know the african continent is connected and not connected as well. I would also like to propose some additional views on strategy:


    • We need to be able to see how best to create a better outreach to the continent at large - Suggestion based on E-Learning and Offline document contents to ensure more and more areas are covered
    • Other is ensuring African participation in comments and also participating widely on policy - Using the same platform of e-learning and offline learning ensure that some representations over the continent get some understanding on policy and to work through.
    • Work with the Af* organisations to cover as much as possible the underserved countries and encourage participation and developing delivery methods of learning on DNS, Policy etc.,
    • Work with Afrinic as well to ensure some delivery of training with the Trainers of Afrinic that could also cut down on costs and still achieve some level of further visibility
    • Afrinic also has a Government working group as well, use that platform with Afrinic and make ICANN presence visible and also help in bringing governments together at the same time to use the same platform together as it will eventually help in the IPv6 and further participation.



  2. Abdulkarim Ayopo Oloyede

    I would like to commend those who contributed to this wonderful draft and the webinar on it 2 weeks ago which explained more details about the African strategy. 

    I would like to add that we also need to place an emphasis on the need to have better participation in the workings of ICANN in Africa. This is essential because we need a louder voice and hold leadership positions in ICANN.  Africans in leadership positions within ICANN would help especially with participation from Africa. We also need to have a strategy on how to support past and current fellows on better participation before during and after the fellowship to improve participation in the  SOs. there should be better ways of putting fellows in touch with each other and form a community where leaders can subsequently emerge in other to strengthen the multistakeholder structure of ICANN.

    Secondly, we need to have a strategy to engage government in Africa. As we all know the government system in Africa is significantly different from other parts of the world and we need to acknowledge this. The reality is that Governments in Africa have absolute power (we might not agree with this but this is the truth) and without government pushing for better use of out top-level domains things might not change. If there is a better push from the government, the awareness and use might be better. We still find government agencies in Africa using public domain names to transact  government activities  

    Lastly, we also need to include strategies on how to have ICANN materials translated into our local languages and also the domain names 

  3. Sarah Kiden

    Comment from Esther Patricia Akello

    (She has requested me to post on her behalf as she has no login details yet)

    ==================

    Hello everyone, 
    1st special thanks for the well written strategy. I commend the team that put together this draft. 

    My suggestions:
    In regards to challenges mentioned. I would like to suggest that a road map on proposed measures to addressing the challenges be added as it will help with progress tracking for the region , this can be done for the planned action items highlighted in the strategy. This can be added as an addendum too. 

    Then on the issue of outreach - my suggestion is that the regional office have a database of past fellows and nextgen from Africa with a set of outreach activities for the fellows to execute . The fellowship community comprises of diverse participants from across Africa and a drive to have fellows reach out to the communities they represent can be initiated with the support of the regional office. Periodic calls to all fellows in the region can be made as follow up. But 1st the database of all regional fellows then a follow up of their activities and support them where necessary.