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AFRALO: Building a Multilingual Internet: Opportunities and Challenges

High-Level Notes

Can you share with us some successful examples of domain names and email addresses being used in local languages within Africa?

• Sarmad: There are many languages written in latin script beyond a-z. Many languages are used across the continent, written in local scripts.
• To make the internet accessible to the people who use these languages and scripts it is important to support these in the Domain Name System
• Local language domain names during covid used to disseminate local language health and safety information to local communities
• Domain names using local language to promote local tourism
• Insurance companies using local language domain names to reach local communities

Could you highlight the roadmap for the successful implementation of UA in Africa, emphasizing the impact of these initiatives? How might we replicate these initiatives?

• Prepare future engineers to implement UA principles in Africa
• Develop the computer science curricula in universities
• If not preparing future students, we will not see much increase in UA
• We have the technology, but we are still facing the number of domains created in IDNs. 
• It is a multistakeholder effort to be done, academia has a role.
• Bring universities to our meetings so they can see how UA can be implemented

What strategies have been effective in overcoming the challenges associated with adopting UA in your country?

• Catherine: AAU project is twofold: addressing technical gap and collaboration with universities to integrate IDN and teaching UA in curriculum 
• ICANN has collaborated with community to organize UA Days
• Encourage others to look at UA website to see what is happening in Africa in UA context
• Nodumo: survey of 421 member universities to find out where they are in their emails and website UA readiness
• We have been focussed on education and training, 1 on 1 technical support to show them how to make websites and emails compliant
• Also awareness raising through UA Days, focus on ensuring education community and young people are involved in those engagements
• There is a lot of enthusiasm.
• Another strategy is piloting a UA curricula and having universities implement and provide feedback
• Incentives and recognition is important, recognizing those universities who go the extra mile
• Requires a lot of monitoring
• Yaovi: Any time we talk about UA, know it is related to domain names and email addresses, not content. 
• Community involved in awareness and education, important for roadmap
• Ongoing work to have resources and modules available
• Technical readiness also important
• We have longer domain names and those in other scripts, websites should be ready to receive emails non-ASCII emails we are already using
• Policy focus is also important
• Collaboration and community involvement

Could you share a success story or a particular challenge you faced while promoting UA adoption?

• Amina: in Nigeria second UA Day collaboration
• UA session went smoothly
• One challenge that participants had was difficulty differentiating UA domain names and content. Also confusing UA with universal access
• Many were interested in benefits that come with UA
• Needs to be more awareness, amplified voice, stakeholders coming together

How important are collaborations and partnerships in advancing multilingual capabilities on the Internet? Could you provide an example of a successful partnership?

• Hon. Lydia: when we put our heads together we can achieve UA
• APNIC: we will take this as a priority area, starting with our government websites. Look forward to further collaboration
• Catherine: encourage everyone to play their part in UA in Africa. Look at it from ICANN perspective, community and stakeholders. Capacity building programs. Continue to work with AAU.

What are the next steps for stakeholders in supporting a multilingual landscape in Africa?

• Nodumo: Continue working with universities. We have over 2,000 universities, so this needs to new scaled up so the lessons we learn can ensure others come on board. Make sure not implemented only by specific universities

Action Items 

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At-Large Leadership Welcome Session

High-Level Notes

• The At-Large Community will be focusing on the different sessions taking place at ICANN80. 
• A lot of sessions will be on Next Round along with standing topics like DNS abuse. 
• Leon Sanchez, ICANN Board Member, provided an update on the Board's recent meeting and other issues of concern. The Board had a workshop had that focused on private contention resolution. No conclusion has been rached so far regarding how the Board will proceed with this. Board is studying options that have been submitted and is inclined to prevent private contention resolution.
• The Board has appointed Hadia Elminiawi as a member of the SSAC. 
• The Board is adopting a resolution on GAC advice regarding contention resolution. 
• Where are we in terms of the ombuds search? 
  • The person has been selected and is in the contracting process 
• What happened to the resolution on WS2?
  • we have failed to comply with this recommendation and several on the board are pushing for this happen as it was recommended by the group. 
• Regarding layoffs, how was number selected, was there a framework
  • No additional details can be provided at this time as it is an operatoinal issue. The Board was informed that this would happen but the Board was provided with detailed criteria.  

Action Items 

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