The Computer Society of Kenya

Since 1986

DATADAILY NATION By JOHN WALUBENGO

Tuesday May 26, 2015

Starting this week, through to June 5, 2015, an important Internet Summit shall take place in Tunis, Tunisia.  During this meeting, two candidates will be elected to join the Africa Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) board as representatives for East Africa and South Africa respectively.

However, Kenya, the most “digital” economy in the region, has surprisingly not fielded a candidate.

What is AfriNIC  and why should it be important for governments and even you as an individual?

In answering this question, we refer to a small incident that happened earlier this year when the bulk of government ICT services in Kenya went off air for close to eight hours.  AfriNIC, the monopoly provider of Internet Protocol (IP) resources across Africa had actually disabled the services because of some long overdue payments.

It took the intervention of a few frantic calls and email exchanges to Mauritius, where AfriNIC is headquartered, for us to get the government network back online. Of course few people noticed the downtime simply because our e-Government Services are not yet widely deployed nor adopted. 

This, however, is increasingly changing, given that getting services online is one of the hallmarks and promises of the current government. A time is soon coming when one-hour downtime for e-Government services will have the same negative impact as one-hour downtime for MPesa services.

GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY FAILURE

That is when the government will belatedly start asking questions like ‘Who controls the unique critical resources necessary to deploy online services?’ They will be told that AfriNIC is mandated by a global framework to store and manage the unique Internet Protocol numbers (IP Addresses) that are mandatory and a prerequisite for any device to connect to the internet.

If one wanted to connect to the Internet, they would typically approach their Internet or telecommunications service provider to connect them.  Behind the scenes, the telecommunications service provider would in touch with AfriNIC and subscribe for the necessary wholesale range of IP addresses required to service all its current and future customers.

It's a bit like getting the unique registration number for your vehicle from the transportation authorities.

Large organisations such as governments, universities, media houses and banks, amongst others, may opt to be direct members and subscribers to AfriNIC in order to directly secure their range of IP addresses.

Whichever option one may chose, the bottom line is that AfriNIC manages and controls the allocation of Internet number resources across Africa.

It then follows that whoever sits on the AfriNIC board enjoys a privileged, unique position in as far as the development and evolution of Internet in Africa is concerned, which is why Kenya's failure to present a candidate is worrying.

Even more worrying, Kenya does not seem to care or bother to have agreed on a preferred candidate for the East African seat at the AfriNIC board.  This is not just a failure on part of government but also on the part of Kenyan industry players who continue to consistently demonstrate apathy for international and regional techno-politics by not bothering to vote for candidates.

MISSED THREE MEETINGS

As a regional leading economy, Kenya must pull its weight and begin to get actively involved in the finer details of both the regional and international internet governance landscape. After all, if things go wrong in that space, Kenya will bear the greatest negative impact compared to its neighbours.

It is not yet clear if our government will be represented at the upcoming meeting considering, that they have consistently missed the last three annual AfriNIC meetings. For some misplaced reasons, the government seems to think that our Internet agenda is well and fully catered for by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). 

This perhaps explains the less-than-curious attention the government gives AfriNIC related activities. Whereas ITU does play some well publicised roles in the Internet governance space, it is very peripheral, and actual control still remains with AfriNIC and its related ecosystem ICANN.

That is why when the government online services went off air earlier in the year,  that call was made to AfriNIC in Mauritius and not the ITU in Geneva. This balance of internet power is likely to remain in favour of AfriNIC for the foreseeable future.

We must therefore make the decision to strategically and actively engage with AfriNIC for the sake of our emerging digital economy.

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