Skip to main content

Pan African Civil Society on Information Society History


A bit of History…

The African civil society contribution to the WSIS process dates back to before the official launching of the WSIS.

In 2000, during the Bamako meeting titled “The passerelles du developpement” African civil society started its mobilization process to be ready in number for the WSIS process. This explains why, in May 2002, again in Bamako, during the first regional meeting dedicated to WSIS, African civil society was present in large numbers.

A major achievement in the Bamako meeting was the setting up of an inclusive African coordinating body dedicated to mobilization, sensitizing and awareness arising amongst African stakeholders. This body, called the African Group, innovated in many ways. For the first time, African Ministers officially set up a multi-partnership body composed of 5 government representatives, 3 members of the civil society and 2 from the private sector. This coordinating mechanism has been working since then and has achieved great results in inputting African priorities and agenda in the two documents adopted at the Geneva WSI Summit in December 2003.

Since then, African civil society has participated in all of the encounters related to WSIS. Initially small numbers of African people were involved. Participant umbers increased to the point where we were able to bring more than 40 participants to the Geneva Summit.

African civil society, in partnership with UNECA (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa), Francophonie, and many other agencies have organized online discussion and workshops on the various themes discussed at the WSIS. There has been success in placing considerations such as development on WSIS agenda.

The way forward

The African civil society action goes far beyond the WSIS. This is the reason why, after months of reflection, the representatives and delegates of the African civil society organisations, participating in the WSIS process since the beginning, felt the need to better organize themselves, in a light, smooth running and efficient coordinating mechanism.

The formation of a co-ordination mechanism became a prerequisite at this critical phase of the overall WSIS process, dedicated to action. After months of online discussion, the representatives and Delegates that met during the First Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 2003, held an election to constitute ACSIS (African Civil Society for the Information Society), a Non Governmental Organisation with a non-profit aim.  The action domain for ACSIS is the use of Information and Communication Technology for African Development. The official launch of ACSIS took place in Tunis in April 2004, thanks to the kind invitation of Tunisian civil society, the financial and technical expertise of ECA and the facilitation of the Tunisian Government. This came as the realisation of a long-time dream of African civil society entities, which emerged in the general civil society online forum of the African Information Society Initiative.




To better pursue its development goal, and in accordance with the objectives of the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action, African Civil society, based on discussions carried on in its virtual plenary before, during and after the first phase of the WSIS, has moved ahead to an enabling phase in the continent’s Information Society Initiative (AISI).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PROPOSAL FOR INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT: TELEMEDICNE IN CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA

Akinremi Peter Taiwo The embracement of information and communication technology had contributed greatly to the development of Nigeria as a whole. ICT infrastructure can be said to be the overall name used to describe all communications hardware and software someone uses as individual, in organization to get work done.  ICT infrastructures are technological tools and resources used to communicate, disseminate, store and manage information effectively.(infoxchange.net) In Nigeria, there are various ICT services which are unfolding as a result of invention of internet and the embracement of information and communication technology by the Government. The development of this great nation depends on the deployment of ICT infrastructure which will lead to various opportunities on her development. Recently, the Government of Cross river state signed  a contract worth N1.1 billion naira to MTN Communication Limited, Nigeria  for  broadband  infrastructure in ca...
Post a Comment
Read more

FLOOD COULD CAUSE NIGERIA POTENTIAL DAMAGES

FLOOD COULD CAUSE NIGERIA POTENTIAL DAMAGES   Well, little effort has been put in place in order to help combat the unforeseen flood disaster. Among this is awareness to help people prevent these challenges, building of channel for water passage, drainage and evacuating the living and building along the water path. Despite the effort putting in place people still show nonchalant attitude toward flood awareness program. I would still say that if Nigeria experiences more rainfall that is beyond that of 2012, many lives and property worth millions will be destroy as a result of nonchalant attitude of the people, small size of drainage system and low quality of material for building drainage system and inaction of the leaders. The Heavy rain fall experienced by Nigerian cities early 2012 killed 363 and rendered useless over 2,100,000 people as of November, 2012(Reuters, 2012) The cities such as Lagos, Ibadan (oke-ayo and Eleyele), Plateau, Jos, Cross River, Borno, Benue, Kog...
Post a Comment
Read more

9TH WEST AFRICAN INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM REPORT BY AKINREMI PETER TAIWO

9 TH WEST AFRICAN INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM, JULY 27 TH AND 28 TH , 2017, COTONOU, BENIN: Digital security for socioeconomic   development and peace in West Africa The 9 th West African Internet Governance Forum was held at Golden Tulip diplomat in Cotonou, Benin. The two (2) day event attracted stakeholders across the nations for dialog on digital security for socioeconomic development. The event recorded 418 participants with full house at the closing session The conference was opened by stakeholders with beautiful welcome addresses. But the opening remarks were made by the Minister for Ministry of Digital Economy and Commission (MENC), Benin. The conference also witnessed the report from the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) countries’ representatives such as Nigeria, Benin, Chad, Gambia, Togo, Niger, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, etc. Sessions on Security, Openness and Privacy was moderated by Jacques Houngbo, FGI Bénin. Jacques gave a brief importance of security in...
Post a Comment
Read more