African Business Leaders to Discuss Future of Internet Governance

African business leaders including thirty Chief Executive Officers from Nigeria will gather in Abuja next week for the 2015 Chief Executive Officer's round table organized by the Africa ICT Alliance, (AfICTA) with the theme "Mobilizing African Business Leaders for the future of the Internet"

The forum, according to AfICTA Chairman, Dr. Jimson Olufuye in a press conference at the weekend provides insights into the issues germane to African continuous growth and development.

Noting that there has been little or no voice by African business leaders in internet governance, he added that the forum would activate wider African business voices and content on the global business discourse in the area of Internet Governance, Domain Name System industry, cyber and information security, Intellectual property rights, create access to venture capitals to enhance, sustainable business, and articulate and advise on strategic policy for business and governance.

Accordingly, the forum, he informed will attract speakers like , Director of National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, Mr. Peter Jack, Dr M.O. Afolabi, the Trade and Transport Enabling Environment Lead at the USAID West Africa Trade Hub Network and African Partnership Project, Pierre Dandjinou , ICANN's Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement for the Africa region, Dr Waudo Siganga, Chairman Computer Society of Kenya, Marilyn Cade, President of ICT Strategies, mCADE LLC, USA among other international speakers.

Beginning from Nigeria, Olufuye explained that the exclusive business leaders' forum will be conducted each year across member African economies giving consideration for national business leaders' voice to be coalesced for active national, regional and global engagement in Internet public policy discourse.

Effective policy framework for the Internet , Internet governance issues, opportunities in the expanding DNS industry and why your voice should be heard, he said will be part of the sub-theme of the awareness and capacity building forum.

According to him, its is expected that at the end of the event, the new interests would have been developed in African (Nigerian) business participation in the volatile but fluid global discourse on the future of the Internet.

The event, he said will be a round table dialogue and face to face talk with about 30 top ICT business CEOs in Nigeria.

According to Olufuye, the forum will open at the Hilton Hotel Abuja Tuesday next week with an appraisal of the current global Internet Governance issues viz-a-viz new gTLD, IANA Transition, ICANN Accountability, WSIS 10-year review, IGF2015, among others.

he leaders, subsequently, he said will have an insight into Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) bottom-up, consensus driven, multi-stakeholder governance model and the role of the Commercial and Business User Constituency (aka BC) in the policy development process of ICANN.

With more than 1.1 billion people and a growing economy engendered by the Internet, African commercial and business players particularly CEOs, he said must step up and make their voices heard and interests represented where it matters most nationally, regionally and globally.

He added that a contemporary African business cannot survive a scenario of a failed Internet, adding that a broken or fragmented Internet cannot serve the interest of Africa.