Highlight of the Day: AfNOG Technical Conference 

 Dr Nii Quaynor giving a welcome speech at AIS'17.

The 18th AfNOG conference comprised panels on peering, cybersecurity, IPv6 security and state of deployment in Africa. Representatives of several AF* organisations addressed the audience during the welcome ceremony, providing valuable insights about their organisations, focus and current activities.  

Presentations by Kyle Spencer, Nishal Goburdhan and Hans Wouters during the Peering panel focused on showcasing statistics from  surveys on African IXPs, and on Interconnection relationships and the agreements covering traffic exchange in our region. Hans highlighted how an ISP toolkit can help maintain an acceptable level of Quality of Experience to customers if the Internet becomes the distribution hub between the headquarters, branch offices and cloud hosted solutions for an enterprise.

The next panel discussed cybersecurity issues and challenges from several perspectives, including different approaches to network protection in the context of the evolutive nature of cyber threats and how the security and privacy challenges for any IoT solution can be addressed. Panelists were Marcus Adomey, Mustapha Ben Jemma and Kris Seeburn.

Fernando Gont talked on IPv6 security and a panel discussion followed. Noah Maina chaired this session, which focused on the state of IPv6 deployment in Africa. The panel was composed of Mukom Tamon, Mathieu Paonessa, Mark Tinka and Fernando Gont. The panel discussed about the low IPv6 deployment rate in the African region and its causes. The panel highlighted that organisations have to see IPv6 as their business solution. The panelists discussed setting up an IPv6 task force as a possible solution however they were doubtful about its efficiency.  

Watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ng1jCFU1b0

 

Panel on Internet Shutdown 

This session was held with the objective to demystify Internet Shutdown in Africa and view it with the lens of different stakeholders in the region. Panelists representing various stakeholder groups (Technical Community, Business Community, Civil Society, and Government) discussed the topic.

The panel consisted of: 

1. Moderator and Academia: Prof Nii Quaynor - Ghana

2. AFRINIC and Technical representative and Business, Mr Sunday Folayan - Nigeria

3. Dr Chérif Diallo, Ministry of ICT - Senegal

4. Government ARPCE, Luc Missidimbazi - Congo

5. KICTANET & Civil Society, Grace Githaiga - Kenya

6. Civil Society, Kathleen Ndongmo - Cameroon

7. Communication Authority of Kenya, Mr Vincent Ngundi - Kenya 

Watch the video of this session at : https://www.internetsummitafrica.org/participate-remotely/internet-shutdown  

Internet Measurement Initiatives in Africa 

Participants at the Internet Measurement Initiatives Workshop

This workshop sought to enable discussions around the African Internet and to formulate strategic directions for Internet measurements research in Africa as well as to understand the breadth of Internet research in this area. It aimed to initiate and accelerate collaboration among Internet researchers in Africa and beyond. The workshop included panel discussions on Internet measurements tools and techniques and well as on the intersection of Internet measurements and Internet policy development and formulation. 

The workshop was co-organised by Research ICT Africa. Read more about this workshop here. 

BCOP Hackathon

BCOP (Best Current Operational Practices) are about coming up with guidelines and operational practices currently agreed on by subject matter experts. This BoF (Birds of a Feather) meeting was held to gather operators and enthusiasts together to discuss BCOP ideas on topics that interests operators and engineers in the region.

FIRE Africa Workshop 

The invitation-only two-day workshop for FIRE Africa Grant and Award winners, "An introduction to Utilization Focused Evaluation and Research Communication (U-FE & ResComm)" was held from 29 - 30 May, 2017. The objective of this workshop was:

• To present the background, definitions and detailed explanation of concepts and steps in the two project management processes.

• To facilitate group discussions on how the projects can apply the processes, integrating them with any on-going frameworks.

• To facilitate action plans on how the two methods will be applied after the workshop.

The participants gained insight into what Utilization Focused Evaluation and Research Communication is, how it works and how to devise strategies on introducing or integrating U-FE and ResComm into their project activities after the workshop.

Attendee's Corner

Didas Mzirai, FIRE Workshop participant speaking on his experience at AIS'17

The Africa Internet Summit in Nairobi not only provided an opportunity for me to meet with important, key internet stakeholders from across the World, but it provided a great opportunity for me to learn a new concept as well. 

For the first time, I learned The Utilization Focused Evaluation and Research Communication skills, which is a great process to monitor and evaluate projects. I am already on my way to integrate the process in my project. Thank you AFRINIC, for all the support! You guys are wonderful!

 

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