North African Internet Governance Forum (NAIGF’23)
Future of the Internet & Virtual Reality: Challenges & Opportunities
19-21 May 2023 Tripoli, Libya
Opening Session
Mr Khaled Gulam welcomed on behalf of the Libyan Internet Society (the host) all the attendees of the 7th North African Internet Governance Forum in Tripoli, Libya, especially the President of the Public Authority for Communication and Informatics and the other Libyan high officers, the Chair and members of the NAIGF MAG, and the Speakers. He thanked all parties that supported the organization of this important event that wouldn’t be as well organized as it is without their precious help.
The Chair of the NAIGF MAG Mr. Tijani BEN JEMAA welcomed the President of the Public Authority for Communication and Informatics(PACI), the Chair of the LTT Board of directors, the local organizing committee, the NAIGF Multi-stakeholder Administrative Group members, the speakers and all the attendees of the 7th North African Internet Governance Forum about “Future of the Internet & Virtual Reality: Challenges & Opportunities”, organized for the first time in Tripoli, Libya.
He then thanked Mr Omar Shuran and his colleagues in the Libyan Internet Society for their invitation as a host of the event and for their warm welcome and their total commitment in the preparation and organization of this forum, Mr. Abdelbassit El Baour the President of the PACI, and all the other Libyan high officers for their strong support and the huge resources they provided to the local organizing committee and to the NAIGF in general for a successful Forum.
He made a special thanks to the sponsors of the event, noting that without their support, the forum couldn’t be organized with attendees from the other North African countries.
He then gave a short overview of the NAIGF, its objectives, its activities and its networks, and closed his address by wishing full success to this event.
The Board Chair of the Libya Telecom and Technology (LTT) Mr Abdelbassit Senoussi and Mr Abelbassit El Baour explained the efforts the Libyan government is making to improve the Internet good governance in Libya and the President of the PACI declared opened the 7th NAIGF
Thematic Sessions
- Session (1) Internet of Tomorrow: Opportunities and Threats
- Session (2) Privacy & Data Protection Versus the OTT Policies
- Session (3) Towards the adoption of a Cybersecurity Regional Strategy
- Session (4) New Technologies: Lessons learned, Opportunities & Threats alleviation
- Session (5) National and Regional Legal Framework for Internet Governance
- Session (6) Industrial Revolution between 4.0 and X.0 generations and its impact on the future of public policies
- Session (7) Role of the private sector in trade & digital economy and their impact on the Region’s States & communities
- Session (8) Social effects of digital media and social media on the family
- Session (9) National IGFs: Challenges, lessons learned and reinforcement
The debate about the opportunities and challenges brought by new technologies came almost at each and every of the panels from the angles of Privacy and data governance, Cybersecurity strategies, Legal frameworks, Industrial revolutions, trade & digital economy, social effects of digital and social media.
While there was a large agreement about the huge opportunities, there was a significant divergence regarding the challenges between who find them normal and easy to overcome, and who have enormous concerns about the capability to not only annihilate their bad effect on the humankind, but even limit them because of the vertiginous speed of the technology development that makes very difficult the attempts to wipe out the harm that my affect the end users.
Closing Session
Mr Abdelbassit El Baour and Mr Abdelbassit Senoussi, respectively President of the Public Authority for Communication and Informatics (PACI) and Board Chair of the Libya Telecom & Technology (LTT) took the floor to express their satisfaction for the great success the forum got, reiterating their thanks for all who contributed to its achievement.
Mr. Tijani BEN JEMAA, Chair of the NAIGF MAG thanked the Libyan Internet Society for their kind invitation and their important contribution with the whole local organizing committee in the preparation & organization of the event.
He made a special mention of consideration for the Forum sponsors, as well as the experts present in Tripoli and those who participated remotely for their valuable contribution and for the rich, open and interesting exchanges with the attendees.
He then highlighted the importance of 3 side events of this NAIGF edition, namely the Libyan IGF, the North African Youth IGF and the new cooperation framework with the national IGFs in North Africa. In fact, the creation of National IGFs in all North African countries has always been one of the NAIGF objectives, and the launch of the Libyan IGF, as well asthe signature of MoUs with the existing National IGFs and with important Internet organizations in the countries where there is not yet a National IGF are forms of concretization of this objective. On the other hand, and after several attempts to create a Youth IGF in our region, we managed this year to make it a reality.
He finally expressed his wish to see the Libyan IGF playing in important role in raising public awareness about the Internet Governance issues in Libya, and the North African Youth IGF capable to motivate young people in our region to engage in the Internet governance dynamics.
Attendance
Most of the attendees were from the host country Libya (64%), while 16% came from Tunisia, 12% from Morocco, 4% from Algeria, 2% from Mauritania and 2% from Sudan.
The gender breakdown shows more men attending the event than women. In fact, 66% were males while only 34% were females.
