African Internet Leaders Express Support for ICANN

African Internet Leaders Express Support for ICANN

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, December 6/PRNewswire/ -- During the ICANN meetings in Cape Town, South Africa, Africa's ISP
Association, AfrISPA released a statement of support for ICANN and its
successful co-ordination of IP addresses and the Internet domain name system.



Highlighting ICANN's multi-stakeholder, private-public partnership,
AfrISPA stated, "We are supportive of the inclusive approach that ICANN
structures provide all stakeholders." AfrISPA, voiced their support for ICANN
in response to the current debate on Internet governance.



Also recognised for its progress was AfriNIC, the emerging Regional
Internet number Registry which handles the administration of IP resources for
Africans, by Africans. Lauded as a success by many speakers during the ICANN
meeting, AfrISPA noted that externally imposed changes in the roles of ICANN
or AfriNIC would not be well received. "There are more urgent and focal areas
for the WSIS, UN and ITU to address." said Eric Osiakwan, Executive Secretary
of AfrISPA. He cited cyber-crime, spam, child pornography, and the high costs
of bandwidth in developing countries among the key issues being neglected by
Internet governance. "Coordination of the Internet's unique identifiers is
currently being handled very well by a multi-stakeholder public/private
partnership. ICANN works well for names and numbers - the same bottom up
approach can be used to solve these other ongoing issues."



ICANN recently approved the redelegation of the dot-ZA (.za) to the South
African Domain Name Authority. The Authority was recently recognized as the
appropriate manager through legislation passed by the South African
government. Citing this return of the Top Level Domain to local control, Dr.
Paul Twomey, ICANN President and CEO said, "The .za redelegation will promote
service to the local Internet community and will help assure continued
Internet interoperability through the global technical coordination that
ICANN was created to provide."



During the ICANN meeting Welcome Ceremony, Dr. Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri,
South African Minister of Communications declared South Africa's support of
ICANN. "We have seen a significant change in governance of the Internet since
the establishment of ICANN," Minister Matsepe-Casaburri said. Recognising
ICANN's progress in establishing a successful multi-stakeholder organisation,
involving global participants ranging from the Governmental Advisory
Committee to business and technical users, to the At-Large users of the
Internet, she concluded her speech by stating firmly, "ICANN cannot and ICANN
shall not fail."



Dr. Twomey welcomed AfrISPA's and Minister Matsepe-Casaburri's comments
and further noted, "The Internet continues to provide opportunities to the
marginalised communities across the globe. ICANN will ensure that it fulfills
its responsibilities so that once someone has access, his or her voice on the
Internet, will be heard."



About ICANN



ICANN is an internationally organised, public benefit non-profit
responsible for coordinating Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation,
protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD)
Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management
functions. For more information please visit: www.icann.org.



ICANN's Press Resource Center: http://www.icann.org/press/





Source: ICANN

Media Contact: Media inquiries, please contact Kieran Baker, ICANN on a South African cell phone: +27-(0)21-410-5160 or U.S. cell phone +1-310-301-5801 or email: press@icann.org


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