Forum Reports

2017

North African IGF Meeting 2017

The First annual of the North African IGF was held in SharmEscheikh, Egypt, on 2-3 December 2017, at the kind invitation of NTRA, under the overarching theme “Towards an Inclusive Digital Opportunity for North Africa“

The meeting was held back to back with the African IGF (4-6 December 2017) and consisted in the four followinving sessions:

Session 1: Internet Governance Processes in North Africa and Globally

This session contributions and discussions focused on

  • The Genesis of the Internet Governance and the NAIGF process
  • The IGF successive sessions from Athens 2006 to Geneva 2017
  • The IGF processes at the African level
  • IGF initiatives at the national level
Session 2: Enabling Environment, realizing the Digital Transformation

This session contributions and discussions the covered the following subjects

  • Rethinking regulatory environment in the region
  • Enabling innovation: legal frameworks
  • Role of communities in enacting progress: NOGs as an example
  • Role of IXPs in regional infrastructure integration
Session 3: Towards an inclusive trustworthy Internet in North Africa

This session dealt with the following questions

  • How is privacy changing?
  • Implications of the GDPR, and the review of Who Is, RDS,
  • Trends in cyberspace and evolving threats,
  • DNS Market uptake in the region,
  • Legislation frameworks: where we are and what need to be done.
Session 4: Shaping the future of Internet Governance in North Africa

This session has been dedicated to a general review of the main challenges of the North African region in developing internet governance. Most of the contributions dealt with improvements in the NAIGF annual meetingprocessus.The following aspects were identified through the discussions:

  • Multi-stakeholderism,
  • Need to widen participation and contribution in the NAIGF,
  • Diversification of topics to be covered by the NAIGF,
  • Obligation of adoption of a clear timeline early in the NAIGF preparatory process,
  • Interest of creating subcommittees for the preparation of next NAIGFs
The NAIGF way forward
  • Congratulating the NTRA for the organization of the first NAIGF meeting, the participants expressed their thanks to the sponsors of the event, namely ISOC Africa, IGF Support Association and ICANN.
  • The participants welcomed the invitation to organize the second annual meeting of the NAIGF in Tunisia, at a date to be convened with the Tunisian side
  • On the basis of the first NAIGF debates, the participants
    • call upon the North African Internet Governance community to extend and openthe participation to the widest possible extent
    • encourage the countries of the region to create their own national IGF, open to stakeholders as stated in the WSIS outcomes
    • Invite the NAIGF MAG to continue Focusing on the realization of NAIGF objectives
    • Ask the NAIGF MAG to prospect ways and means toenlarge its contribution to and cooperation with other regional and sub-regional IGFs, notably the Arab IGF.
  • Ridha Guellouz
  • NAIGF MAG Chair