IGF 2022 WS #39 Africas Dilemma post-pandemic fragmentation

Organizer 1: Gabriel Karsan, INTERNET SOCIETY YOUTH@IGF
Organizer 2: Lily Edinam Botsyoe, Ghana Youth IGF
Organizer 3: Ihita Gangavarapu, Youth IGF India
Organizer 4: Milton Cabral, Cabo Verde Digital
Organizer 5: Yawri Carr, Technische Universität München / Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung
Organizer 6: Lisa nyamadzawo, Internet Society

Speaker 1: Lily Edinam Botsyoe, Technical Community, African Group
Speaker 2: Ihita Gangavarapu, Technical Community, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 3: Lisa nyamadzawo, Civil Society, African Group
Speaker 4: Yawri Carr, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Moderator

Milton Cabral, Government, African Group

Online Moderator

Gabriel Karsan, Civil Society, African Group

Rapporteur

Yawri Carr, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)

Format

Break-out Group Discussions - Flexible Seating - 60 Min

Policy Question(s)

We are in the battle of building or breaking a safer, user oriented internet, in the periods of deceptive design how does Africa use elements of human oriented design thinking for policy and internet infrastructure and use cases that can assist in navigating fragmentation?

What is the Splitnet? How our role in the volatility of the internet through broken value systems and fragmentation calls for mindset evolution

What are we to do when the internet sovereignty systems create hallowing impacts of division and tribalistic rooted populism, do we choose digital division or digital unity?

Connection with previous Messages: An internet united, we aim to use our session to support of the messages of universal and meaningful connectivity without division in infrastructure and content which is trusted, stable and stable in ints infrastructure and capitalising the emerging cross cutting technologies to boosting deeper integration of local interconnected networks.

SDGs

4. Quality Education
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
16. Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
17. Partnerships for the Goals


Targets: Africa has means of leveraging diplomatic alliances and break the misunderstanding of translating digital transformation among stakeholders for both political and business cases, our session shows use of strategic multilateralism to build inclusive and stronger peaceful institutions, with accessible open infrastructures deeper structural participation on human activities reduces inequalities and labor force and flow of resources information and assets becomes unbarred improving livelihoods and economic growth with quality access to education that strengthens our cooperation.

Description:

In the crossroad of maturing and collaborating in building a strong unified internet ecosystem, the multistakeholderism model is at a conflict of ideology that is pitting stakeholders against one another, with the universal declaration of an open internet led by the states with its covet view on disinformation, misinformation and censorship versus the china firewall and threats of the Putin Net. Our session will view the matter with the lens of young Africans battling internal policy problems in boosting internal access and the our position externally in a highly fragile internet ecosystem, now its time to dwell deep on what the internet means beyond the days of Arpanet what is the internet really for Africa and how do we develop a strong morale and strategic meaning and purpose of the model of the internet that is our and independent in its operation as a network and translation of its purpose to the young demographic of internet leaders and shapers.
Lets begin in ancient Egypt with the hieroglyphs modern emojis, language systems and local innovations that formed the bedrock of modern civilisation language, literacy and knowledge share the great Alexandra library, The C section innovation in ancient Buganda or the matrilineal communities that had strong women leadership in power, Nandi Empire.
Africa has always pioneered and paved the way in localisation of emerging technologies that have shaped modern civilisation, our identity and cultural systems of open trade, flow of information language localisation such as the invention of Swahili, we as people are sustainable with local innovations that have found a place in the world.
Lets fast forward to Mpesa and mobile money technology with recent reports showing the majority of mobile transactions happen across Africa, our rural developing communities have access to finance and real-time communication. It's a prerequisite now how local innovation has catapulted technology transfer and development.
Nigeria has unicorns reshaping fintech in the world, our young labor-force is maturing and now Africa exports Skill Sets, patents.
Now with the world’s largest talent pool, demographically young people in Africa are the future of consumers, sustainable energy solutions are emerging in Africa , local content and innovation has been tested globally and acknowledged our place in it with the limitations we have. The Flying geese theory states capital flows where labor is and African labor is the bold option, but we need collaboration in decentralisation of bureaucracy and free access to technology infrastructure, finance, Skillsets and exchanged leadership capacity.
With Mpesa, Telecoms in Africa have entered new financing markets with local products, The availability of connectivity has created unicorns with boldest solutions to major world problems, we know how to localize emerging technologies with our communal systems to make accessible innovations with empowered meaningful access to emerging technologies such as Blockchain for reaching more frontiers of affordable finance, 5G to boost new connections of devices hybrid industries, cloud & infrastructure to store and share computational power across the continent, AI to create shared neural networks that solve real world issues such as the Ebola Detection AI App, Malaria big data analysis we have a deep understand on real issues and empowered access and use will lead to more solutions.

Africa has a strategic location and spirit in its common ground cooperation and collaboration between The west and East with localised innovations in Africa we can aid in resolving the Fragmentation of the internet with deeper collaboration in Africa Led and development and force deeper structures interconnections and economy share between the east and west, Emerging technologies and our emerging labor are the future of multilateral cooperation via digital diplomacy, battling cyberwars and emerging security threats to collective economic gain in consumerism 3.0 access.

Expected Outcomes

Our outcomes is rekindled morale to remind us the potency of connected communities how the internet has boosted human potential with global share of technology resources, how it aided us in the pandemic and importantly Africa's strong alliance and allegiance in localizing technologies and fighting against fragmentation of connectivity and our global culture of a global digital village
Recommendation will be shared to see how we can boost and inspire the young generation to protect the internet and innovative stronger technological institutions with shared superstructures that are based on Ubuntu, we are because we are. We win together, protect together and ubuntu internet is a free, open accessible, Democratic and accountable tech and it’s our time to impact and influence global policy with this lens. From Africa's youth and global friends.

Hybrid Format: We aim to deeply experiment on use of creative storytelling with prerecorded and curated video and multimedia content to raise awareness and contextualize our take on the potent matter of fragmentation, the tools we will use mostly are to support accessibility to people living with disability using loud translations and text online, for other groups we shall have participatory debate and dialogue with questions posted prior framed from the policy questions that our conversations are grounded in the nature of waiting for participants answers and reaction in setting the next agenda and flow of our dynamic curiosity driven use cases discussions, we shall welcome monologues and short videos from online audiences to be showcased during the workshops segments.

Online Participation



Usage of IGF Official Tool.