Internet Governance in Africa

h t t p : / / w w w. s o c i e t e s d e l i n f o r m a t i o n. n e t I N E T 2 0 0 7 A B U J A S p e c i a l i s s u e Welcome to this special issue of Sociétés de l Information dedicated to the AfNOG, AfriNIC and INET meetings held in Abuja at the beginning of May 2007. This special edition comes with reports and interviews of key speakers that highlight the depth and the pertinence of the discussions. INET Abuja was the fourth conference of its kind, but it was also the very first one organized by our newly created Regional Bureau for Africa. This reflects ISOC s growing regionalization and localization dynamic. INET Abuja outlined two major regional themes that will directly enrich the international debate related to the Internet, those of cyber security and Internet governance. The cyber security session triggered a heated debate, the intensity of which showed the importance of security issues in Africa. The session was a good occasion to hear about the state of play in unwanted traffic and to meet members of the Nigerian Cybersecurity Commission. The equally animated Internet Governance session confirmed Africa s early involvement in the World Summit on Information Society process. INET Abuja was a great opportunity for participants from all sectors and various African sub-regions to agree on their priorities and keep the debate alive locally. ISOC would like to express its gratitude to all the INET participants for making the event a great success. Dawit Bekele Internet Governance in Africa The Internet governance debate is currently being addressed in the framework of an institutionalized international dialogue through the annual UN Internet Governance Forum. Since the very beginning of Internet governance discussions (WSIS 2003 Geneva, WSIS 2005 Tunis), the Internet Society has been fully engaged in the Internet governance debate and has been a firm advocate of the necessity of having a multilateral, multi-stakeholder, democratic and transparent debate. Organizing regional forums such as INETs is clearly one of ISOC s most powerful tools to leverage and give voice to stakeholders from all continents. The recent Internet Society sponsored and organized INET conference in Abuja, Nigeria that took place alongside the AfriNIC-6 and AFNOG-8 meetings brought together almost one hundred participants from all over the world. The event, led by ISOC s regional Bureau for Africa, headed by Dawit Bekele, involved a wide range of representatives from civil society, governments, telecommunications and Internet companies, and members of the academic community and regional operators. Internet governance issues were discussed across three sessions, the first dedicated to the state of play in Africa and at the international level, the second dedicated to access issues, the third to an open discussion of the Internet-related priorities for Africa. Throughout the sessions, expert speakers highlighted a series of priorities for Africa that will help guide future Internet governance discussions in Africa and the preparatory work for the upcoming Internet Governance Forum in Rio in November 2007. Not surprisingly, access rated as the most important issue for those at the INET meeting, and specifically the issue of connectivity and access costs, followed by regulatory frameworks for improving access for rural areas. Security was the second most important area with a clear call for greater stakeholder engagement. Diversity was also important with promotion of local content as the most important issue, followed by the use of the Internet in addressing challenges with regard to literacy and to accessibility to content for disadvantaged communities. ISOC is committed to enabling these discussions going forward. We firmly believe that constructive dialogue on priorities such as those touched upon in INET Abuja is one of the best ways to enable stakeholders to fully participate in Internet governance issues at national and international levels. Constance Bommelaer Read more about Internet governance on ISOC s site: www.isoc.org/pubpolpillar/ governance or at: Internet Governance Forum: www.intgovforum.org This publication was originally written in French and translated into English for distribution to a wider audience 1

INET 2007 ABUJA Special issue State of play in Internet governance To have one s voice heard on the global level, one should first promote debate and capacity-building at the local level. That is why localization is key when tackling the issue of Internet governance and Africa. Attending is not the issue. It s not about being represented in international conference halls in farplaced countries, but about participating and having one s say in the forming of the discussion, stating what we really want. Africa should be a contributor not just an attendee, says Adiel Akplogan, CEO of AfriNIC, summing up the at-large debate on Africa and Internet Governance during ISOC s INET conference in Abuja. During the conference, Dawit Bekele, head of ISOC s African Regional Bureau, underlines how the transparency and openness advocated by the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), set up in the wake of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), are in accordance with what ISOC stands for. The IGF is a great place to discuss the issues related to the governance of the Internet, he says. Akplogan concurs, noting, The fact that the IGF is not a decision-making body allowed people to express themselves freely and with passion. Pierre Dandjinou, representing the United Nations Development Program, sounds a note of caution, saying What can Africa expect from international meetings? WSIS promised access and we are still waiting, adding, IGF is a loose forum to discuss things. That s it. Don t expect more. Therefore African people should get organized and have regional meetings. The discussion should be localized. Local strategy with other organizations. One of the goals of ISOC Chapters is to work in that direction, Bekele ads. AFNOG official Nii Quaynor urges program attendees to Participate. We are here to build capacities and for that we need your participation! In response to at least one attendee calling for greater responsibility at the national level in building capacity, forum panellists all agree that waiting for a top-down solution would cause as much, if not more, disappointment as waiting for an external solution. We have been pursuing that way for years and years and it is just not working, Akplogan stresses. That is why we should engage in capacity building from the bottom. While doing so, we should also remember that capacity building is not only about individuals but also about pushing forward organizations. There should be common goals around which to converge, for example access. With that in mind, the question of funding becomes less relevant. As Quaynor points out: Local is good as it requires no air travel and heavy organization. Bekele concludes the forum by calling all parties involved to seek ways to bind together and push for increasing awareness of the importance of Internet infrastructure inside each and every African country. Localization is indeed a recurring word. Panellists agree that it is what is important right now for Africa. ISOC firmly believes that the IGF should focus on strategy; however it will not achieve this goal of greater participation if it is only a yearly reunion. There should be discussions at the national level, especially in Africa, Bekele says. National debate also needs more implication from the national governments. ISOC Chapters can and should fuel the discussion From left to right, Pierre Dandjinou, Nii Quaynor, Adiel Akplogan and Dawit Bekele. 2

h t t p : / / w w w. s o c i e t e s d e l i n f o r m a t i o n. n e t INET 2007 ABUJA Special issue BoF on IPv4 exhaustion Cooking the future of IPv4 Exhaustion of the remaining pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses is quickly approaching, and AfriNIC is bracing itself for the next step. Exhaustion of the IPv4 pool and the inevitable transition to IPv6 has been the talk of many national and international meetings. With IPv4 exhaustion looming and IPv6 taking a slow start, the debate is heating up. According to Geoff Huston s latest report, the global pool of IPv4 addresses should expire in late 2009-early 2010. Alain Patrick Aina, special project manager for AfriNIC, stresses the total expiration could be extremely rapid, depending on the rates of consumption. In Abuja, Bill Woodcock, Board member of ARIN, the North American Regional Internet Registry (RIR), is already warning: RIRs should get rid of old ways of thinking and start planning their next step. AfriNic managing the end of IPv4 With less than 1% of the distributed IPv4 address space, AfriNIC is by far the smallest RIR. However, it has anticipated the end of IPv4 at an early stage. It is foreseen that its current IP address space will run out by November 2008. Two last request for further allocations to IANA, the global pool s steward, should allow to delay IPv4 s regional exhaustion until April 2014. Nevertheless, if IPv4 consumption rate accelerates critically before AfriNIC is able to justify its last request, there could be a major concern to ensure a smooth transition before IPV6 is fully implemented. Operators in the APNIC region, covering Asia, have proposed a policy aiming at coordinating and planning the exhaustion of the global IPv4 pool. The last IPv4 address space would be distributed equally amongst the five RIRs covering respectively the African, North and South American, Asian and European regions. However, this might not be sufficient to help the developing countries to face the scarcity of the resource and the black-market it will generate. With IPv4 supply shrinking and the demand increasing, B. Woodcock believes that RIRs will find it increasingly difficult to sustain the needs-based allocation regime which has predominated to date. Developing countries will certainly be the most affected by the transition to a demand-driven market. A. P. Aina says that IP addresses distribution statistics show that emerging regions are trailing, and will not have much to bargain with while having to meet a growing demand. He sees the small ISPs from emerging regions as easy targets for all the swindles that would come with an uncontrolled black-market. New challenges, new solutions Concerning the transition period from IPv4 to IPv6, Didier Kasole, Board member of AfriNIC and President of ISOC Democratic Republic of Congo, estimates that any dramatic scenario should be played down. Indeed, he notes that RIRs will still have IPv4 addresses to distribute for some time after IANA has allocated the last block from the central pool: After the factory has shut down, resellers still have stock to ship. Then there is the question of the so-called legacy IP blocks generously distributed in the early days of the Internet. At that time, there was no perception of the scarcity of the resource and it appears today that many of those blocks are underused. If IANA and the RIRs were able to get a few back, D. Kasole thinks that it might give the global community the few extra years it needs to smoothly switch to IPv6. Meanwhile, AfriNIC has already trained local operators in eight African countries and is currently finalizing its V6Mandela, a laboratory and test-center aimed at the African community. IPv4 depletion and transition to IPv6 could turn RIR s business model upside down according to B. Woodcock. However there is still time to face the new challenges. Resource certification could help in that regard. According to A. P. Aina, the deployment and use of this technology by the RIRs could help secure the integrity of transferred resources, facilitate the transfers and their exclusivity, thus limiting the negative effects of a new demand-driven market. It could also give a new purpose to RIRs, concludes B. Woodcock. 3

INET 2007 ABUJA Special issue Internet Security How to address unwanted traffic on the Internet Framework for Cybersecurity in Nigeria Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks, spam, viruses, worms the Internet is becoming a dangerous playground for malevolent people. The bad news is that the good guys are losing the battle. The first thing that strikes someone listening to Basil Udotai is that Nigeria faces the exact same challenges than the rest of the world in regard to cybersecurity. Talk about busting a myth! Loa Andersson, a member of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), has investigated the dark side of the Internet and what he reports is unsettling. One only needs to take a look at their inbox or to check their junk folder to realize that the amount of unwanted e-mail is continuously growing. Recent studies report that spam now represents 60% of all e-mails. And the situation is getting worse because unwanted traffic now reflect a growing number of criminal activities. According to Andersson, it is no longer teen hackers wrecking havoc just for the sake of it, today the unwanted traffic is financially motivated and the average Netsurfer is the target. The Internet s underground economy is a virtual shopping mall where valuable personal information is bought and sold. And we don t have the right weapons to strike back. While technical solutions exist, the tools we have are either not good enough or not deployed in the appropriate way. And, all too often, it comes down to inadequate security education of Net users and to low technical competence. Andersson, however, is of the opinion that something could be done, especially in regard to educating the Net community. Emphasis should be put not so much on the low-end users than on the advanced users and the in-between levels. The only other option is to put an end to the openness of the Internet and make it very complex, which is not a viable solution, notes Andersson. Everyone is now conscious of what is at stake and a recent IAB workshop focused on the issue of security. Participants to this workshop were mostly from the United States and Europe but Andersson stresses that he strongly advocates African participation in the ongoing discussion, asking that more African stakeholders come forward. He said: We now need an action plan and the ISOC Chapters should play a major role in regard to education. For his first public presentation, Basil Udotai from the Office of the National Security Adviser, Nigerian Directorate for Cybersecurity, gives the audience a speech on cybersecurity adding local flavour by explaining 419, also known as the Nigerian scam. One day a hapless Internet user receives an email from a close relative of the personal doctor of some African dictator. The poor man needs someone to help him recover huge amounts of money frozen in some bank account in Zug, Switzerland. While waiting to receive his share, he has transferred small then larger amounts of money to the distressed relative 60,000 USD in one case supposedly originating from Nigeria complete with his personal and bank details. This is what is commonly referred to as a 419, an homage to the relevant section of the Nigerian Criminal Code. However, according to Udotai, Nigerian nationals are not to blame for most of the 419s. Udotai added, however, that the challenges faced by Nigeria today have nothing to do with 419s. Instead the threat to Nigerian cybersecurity is that an increasing number of networks are being used to run mission critical services for business and the public sector. Nigerian authorities are working on identifying critical information infrastructure and creating a special compliance regime for them. The good news: Nigeria has been able to establish links with the principal law enforcement agencies around the world. The bad news: still too often Nigeria is looked upon with suspicion, with major Internet players such as Paypal and GoDaddy! blocking everything somehow linked with Nigeria. No more talking, time to vote. 4

h t t p : / / w w w. s o c i e t e s d e l i n f o r m a t i o n. n e t INET 2007 ABUJA Special issue Physical access and enabling environments Africa is really falling behind compared to the rest of the world. While access is increasing here it is doing so at a much slower rate than in the rest of the world, said Mike Jensen, an independent South African consultant and recognised figure in Internet metrics. The hard fact is that Africa is not closing the gap, on the contrary. GSM technologies are making huge profits in Africa when VoIP and WiFi are hindered by the state of the infrastructure and regulations. It is only in a minority of countries that changes are happening. According to Jensen, what Africa needs is therefore to promote competition to have the prices going down and the infrastructure going up. ISOC could have a pivotal role in that regard through consumer support and advocating and encouraging for regulation changes. The issues faced by Africa in regards to access are however more deeply rooted, according to Titi Akinsanmi, from the Global Teenager Project. Advocating access in a pan-african meeting of mostly highly computer-literate people is fine and good, but are such meeting working for just the computer-literate, she asks? It is the rest of the population that should be helped, not so much to gain access to the technology but helped with education on how to use technology. How can I approach, enter or even exit technology? How do I communicate with it, through it? Sometime we need basic technologies for people to enjoy life; that s what it is all about. The access to the knowledge of implementation is what Akinsanmi calls access to access. How many people are aware of the opportunities that come with participating in ISOC? she asks. Sure, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that discusses issues such as technical access is a great opportunity to show governments what s at stake. It is a really good occasion to create a springboard to have things moving forward by making others know what s going on but the battle for access can t be just about attending international meetings. It is about engaging the right set of people at the national level. We can build capacity, go institutional but before everything, we have to build an agenda and make people aware. Mobile networks Vs Internet backbone Michuki Mwangi from KENIC, the operator of the.ke cctld, agrees but prefers to tackle the technical side yet again. In his view, access is demand driven. One of the most successful industries in Africa is mobile communications. The African mobile network is far more impressive than that of America and Europe Titi Akinsamni and Michuki Mwangi call for access. put together. Why did it happen? Why did it develop? Because there was demand. Therefore we could spend the next 10 years deploying high speed Internet backbones across Africa, for Mwangi the question will still be: what needs to flow inside that pipe? He does not see a reason why anyone would agree to pay 50 USD a month to be able to check gmail and yahoo mail at home when one could just go out to the nearest Internet café and pay one dollar a day to do the same. And he ponders: Internet-content that is relevant to people in Africa does not exist at present, hence there is no incentive to join in. If Africa had more interconnections, maybe then African people would share more content, firing up the demand for access. All this leads Mwangi to the same conclusion as Akinsanmi: people need to be exposed to the Internet to create demand. You can have all the information you need on the Internet but you have to point people in the right direction, Mwangi stresses. Nii Quaynor, from AfNOG, shares the same beliefs as the rest of the panel but experience has taught him to go past the most immediate issues to address what lies underneath. Access to achieve what goal? he asks. Do we want access to propel investment in Africa or development? If this question is not answered, then access is just a means to no end and Africa will continue with past wanderings, illustrated by the only too numerous inconsistencies in regard to privatisation policies, he noted. In the audience, William Stucke, founding member of ISOC South Africa and Chairman of AfrISPA, an association of African ISPs, concurred: One of the problems in Africa is that frontiers make it difficult to have cross-border networks. The lack of competition in African countries induces a lack of entrepreneurship therefore a lack of infrastructure resulting in high prices and low access. Demand is invisible until you have sufficient competition to reduce prices to affordable levels. 5

INET 2007 ABUJA Special issue Bridging the gap Michuki Mwangi chairs AfTLD, an association of African cctlds operators. As the Administrative Manager of the Kenya Network Information Center (KENIC) he also manages the.ke domain. Mike Jensen is a South African consultant with experience in over 35 countries in Africa assisting in the establishment of information and communications systems. What are the specific challenges the African cctlds have to face today? First of all, it took time for the African region to adopt and implement Internet technologies. Consequently, most of the African cctlds were initially operated from outside the country they were supposed to represent. However, as Internet penetration progresses, a growing number of African countries now manage their own cctlds. Another issue is that that cctlds are perceived as local while the gtlds would be global. This has the negative effect of leading many registrants to have gtlds over the cctld of their respective countries. Competitive pricing is another challenge the cctld operators have to face. Registrants insist on having lower prices and this affects the economic model of quite a few registries. How can AfTLD help African cctlds to develop? In Africa, the.za,.ke,.sn,.mw domains, among others, are real success stories. They have been successfully managed by self-sustaining registries. In order to replicate these successes, the AfTLD has decided to review these case studies. Our association will also reach out to various communities to make them aware of the importance of cctlds. Finally, AfTLD plans on facilitating capacity building and it will set up a specific training sessions focused on technical management, best practices and policy matters. How are partnerships with organisations such as AfriNIC and ISOC helping AfTLD to achieve its goals? AfTLD is a young organization and seeks collaboration with various regional and international organizations to enhance its efforts and activities. Thus, with the support of organizations like AfriNIC, ISOC, AfNOG and ICANN we are afforded resources to undertake and engage in various community related activities in the region. In addition, AfTLD is also collaborating with other regional cctld associations such as CENTR in Europe, APTLD and LACTLD. We exchange information, research results and statistics. AfTLD will also create an avenue for members to share relevant information for cctld operation. Could you explain why you think that increase in Internet access is taking longer in Africa than in the rest of the world? African countries present very diverse situations. However, this pattern is fairly consistent across the continent. Available bandwidth and access is increasing at a much slower rate than in the rest of the world, with some exceptions, such as in Senegal, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya and Rwanda. How are costs hindering Africa? High costs make the use of the Internet too expensive for the average person to do anything more than a few e-mails and a quick scan of the Web. Because of monopolies on international gateways, the operators are able to charge over USD 5,000 /Mbps per month, while bandwidth on transatlantic routes is around USD 5. As a result, very few people can afford to use the Internet or even make international calls. Generally, the high cost of communication services result in little chance to create new jobs or cut the cost of doing business, let alone for interacting with friends and family. So far these problems haven t surfaced fully because of the limited penetration of infrastructure and low levels of literacy. But it is a chicken-and-egg syndrome and the cycle must be broken through lowering of costs. What are the most urgent steps that need to be taken? Open the markets to retail and last-mile competition while establishing open access national and international backbones for the retail operators to base their services on. What can organisations such as ISOC do to have things improve? Increase public and governmental awareness of the issues, through supporting local consumer groups, information packs and using the broadcast media to spread the message, especially as TV and radio have much higher penetration than other media in Africa. 6