PRESS RELEASE: Closure of the 4th AfriNIC Public Policy Meeting

[May 26th 2006]

[AfriNIC Ltd. – Cybercity , Mauritius ], AfriNIC concluded its fourth meeting last week. This meeting, the third after its formal recognition as a Regional Internet Registry for the African Region, was held in Nairobi , Kenya . Two other major Annual technical events in the continent took place jointly with the AfriNIC-4 meeting: these are the 7 th AfNOG meeting and the INET' Africa event.

Over the five days, network specialists and experts from all over the continent (from 30 different African countries) exchanged experiences, research works and views about the development of the internet in Africa . Subjects ranging from wireless and mobility networking in Africa to WSIS and IGF follow-up were discussed. The meetings were preceded by some side events such as the first consultation meeting on African Research and Education Networks (AfREN - with the participation of the Association of African Universities (AAU), representatives for academic networks and National Research and Education Networks) and the third AfriNIC hands-on training on IPv6 (Previous Trainings were held in Egypt and Sudan early this year). All the IPv6 trainings lead to an IPv6 address block allocation and the setup of an IPv6 connection to the countries if there is no such connection before. ' It is amazing to see young people from Africa presenting on very narrow technical subjects at the same level as what we use to see in US. Africa has competencies, we need to use them for our development, and I will do my part by getting more involved myself and by also involving more people willing to work for this continent development ' says Dr. Muhammadou Kah from ABTI, American University in Nigeria .

As always during the AfriNIC Public Policy meeting, policy proposals for Internet resource management in the AfriNIC region were discussed: Two specific proposals were put on the table: Provider Independent IPv6 address assignments to End-Users and the 4-byte ASN transition process. The first proposal was sent back to the mailing list for further discussion, while the second received consensus from all the participants.

The last part of the meeting was dedicated to the 3 rd Annual General Meeting, where activity reports for 2005 and the 2006 budget were presented to the members. Both reports were approved by the members present. It was also time for the renewal of two seats on the AfriNIC Board (of Directors) - (the Southern and Eastern Africa seats). After the votings Alan P. Barrett ( South Africa ) and Badru Ntege ( Uganda ) were elected as primary BoDs while Silvio C. Almada ( Angola ) and Brian Longwe ( Kenya ) were elected as alternates for their respective regions.

According to Adiel A. Akplogan, the CEO of AfriNIC, "this meeting once again has shown the ability of our continent to work together when specialists are gathered and focus is made on very specific issues and areas".

AfriNIC will hold its fifth meeting from November 27 to December 1 st 2006 in Mauritius .

BACKGROUND:

AfriNIC: AfriNIC is the Regional Internet Registry in charge of management of IP resources in Africa and the Indian Ocean regions. AfriNIC is a not-for-profit and non-governmental membership based organisation incorporated in Mauritius . AfriNIC provides services to more than 200 operators from 50 countries in the region. Prior to AfriNIC's set up, Africa was served by three different RIRs (APNIC, for the Indian Ocean countries; RIPE NCC, for African countries located above the equator; and ARIN, for African countries located below the equator).

AfriNIC-4 Meeting Report is now available

More Information about AfriNIC can be found at: www.afrinic.net

More information on the existing Regional Registries can be found at: http://www.nro.net

Contact AfriNIC: http://www.afrinic.net/contact.htm