Public Comment
Draft ICANN Africa Strategic Plan 2016-2020 Version 3.0
Open Date
30 July 2018 23:59 UTC
Close Date
10 September 2018 23:59 UTC
Staff Report Due
24 September 2018 23:59 UTC
Brief Overview
Purpose: On July 2, 2018; the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) Africa team convened a select committee of Supporting Organization (SO) / Advisory Committee (AC) representatives from Africa to review the current Africa strategy. They came up with a draft reviewed document ICANN Africa Strategy Ver 3.0 2016 – 2020. This public comment proceeding is seeking further input from the community on the draft document in line with our commitment to inclusive bottom-up and multistakeholder approach.
Current Status: The Africa strategy was one of the first ever regional plans approved by ICANN org. The strategy document itself is a living document and should be flexible enough to respond to the changing needs and prevailing circumstance of the community. Hence the need for this regular review and appraisal to ensure that ICANN Org, and indeed the Africa Strategy is responsive to the community in conformance to the overall Mission and remit of ICANN organization (org.) The first review was done by the community in November 2014 and resulted in the current ICANN Africa Strategy Ver 2.0 2016 – 2020. ICANN has since undergone important transformations in the last 3 years such as the IANA stewardship transition (October 2016) that led to introduction of new ICANN Bylaws and created an Empowered Community of ICANN. It was therefore important to revisit the Africa Strategy to realign it to these new realities at ICANN org.
Next Steps: ICANN org. will consolidate the comments, generate an updated strategy document as per the comments and formally re-launch the reviewed ICANN – Africa Strategic Plan FY16 – FY20 at the upcoming ICANN63 meeting.
Section I: Description and Explanation
In June 2012, the African community had a historic meeting in Prague, Czech Republic (ICANN 44) that was chaired by Steve Crocker (then chairman of ICANN Board), Fadi Chehade (ICANN’s incoming CEO at that time) and Moctar Yedaly from the African Union Commission. The outcome was a new approach to Africa that would focus on the following action lines:
- Develop a framework for ICANN's Africa strategy
- Support stronger presence for ICANN in Africa
- Increase Africa's participation in ICANN
The Africa Strategy Working Group (ASWG) which was set up during the meeting came up with the Africa Strategy document (2012 - 2015) which was presented during ICANN45 in Toronto. The document has now become the cornerstone of ICANN’s engagement in Africa. Implementation of the strategy started in 2013, with the recruitment of the Vice President (VP) for Africa and with a few key flagship projects. The Africa team has now grown with further recruitment of two more managers.
The initial 3-year Africa Strategic Plan encompassed ICANN’s overall delivery in Africa, which boils down to capacity development in the DNS industry and business, capacitating African ccTLDs, securing the DNS system in Africa and equally importantly, deepening and broadening engagement with all stakeholders including governments, private sector, academia and civil society in Africa. In 2014, ICANN org. reviewed its global strategic plan to a new ICANN 2016 – 2020 Strategic plan focused on 5 key pillars / Strategic Objectives. This occasioned the first review of the Africa Strategy in November 2014 to align it to the ICANN overall strategy.
Section II: Background
On May 5, 2018, the Global Stakeholder Engagement (GSE) Africa team officially released the 5-Year implementation report of the ICANN Africa strategy in Dakar, Senegal in the sidelines of Africa Internet Summit (AIS) 2018. It has been five years since the first ICANN Africa Strategic Plan 2012 – 2015.
The strategy identified 8 strategic objectives, which were eventually, translated into more than a hundred projects to be rolled out in a period of three years. The overall goal of the strategy being a transformation of Africa into a contributor to the Internet and an emerging market for the domain name business and industry. In 2014, ICANN org. released a new strategic plan. It was therefore imperative that the Africa Strategy be aligned with the overall ICANN strategic focus. This necessitated the first review meeting convened by the GSE Africa team in in November 24-25, 2014.The result of the review meeting was the adoption of the current updated ICANN Africa Strategic plan Ver2.0 FY16 – 20.Section III: Relevant Resources
- Draft ICANN Africa Strategic Plan 2016-2020 Version 3.0 [PDF, 226 KB]
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