President of the
Arab Republic of Egypt
Egypt will host the sixth edition of the African Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF) from December 4 to 6, 2017 in the resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh. The event will be held with the support of the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt.
The African Internet Governance Forum is a platform to conduct multilingual discussions about significant issues between African stakeholders related to Internet in Africa in general and Internet Governance issues in particular.
The African Internet Governance Forum comes to increase awareness and build capacity on Internet Governance for African users to ensure that all stakeholders are well prepared for contribution and interaction. It is also to ensure that the concerns of Africa are taken into account in the IGF process and to promote use of African languages in cyberspace.
Africa’s contribution to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process has led to the formation of the African Internet Governance Forum which 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 sixth Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in Nairobi, Kenya from September 27 to 30, 2011. Basically the Internet Governance Forum is a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue platform where emerging and prevailing issues on internet governance are discussed with the aim of fostering the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and the development of the Internet, thus facilitating content development and access to information and knowledge.
The African Internet Governance Forum supports and strengthens the ongoing regional initiatives. 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 internet governance related issues on the continent, there was a strong need for the establishment of an African Internet Governance Forum. It is also to reach out to continental and global stakeholders and guide in their engagement in continental, regional and national initiatives.
