Arsene Tungali

Organization:	Rudi International
Affiliation:	Fellowship Program, I* Organization
Stakeholder Group(s):	,|xyz|xyz| }}
Region:	Africa
Country:	The Democratic Republic of The
Email:	arsenebaguma [at] gmail.com
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Arsene Tungali B. is a Congolese (DRC) young leader and role model, passionate about issues related to youth, media, leadership and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) among others. He currently identifies himself as an Internet Freedom advocate based on his current advocacy and research work in that area. He is also an entrepreneur running both a nonprofit and a business. Mr Tungali has received recognition such as the 2015 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders award, a program started by President Obama, which led him to take earn a Certificate in Leadership from the University of Delaware, in Delaware and an internship with the El Pomar Foundation, in Colorado Springs, USA.

Professional work

Arsene is a Co-Founder and Executive Director of Rudi International since July 2012. Rudi International is a Congo-based organization supporting the people in need in areas such as education, capacity building and advocacy. Rudi is well known in the Francophone African region as one of the organizations working at the forefront of digital rights, Internet development, and capacity building. In this area, Rudi has convened in November 2018, the first-ever Conference on Human Rights at Digital Age in the DRC that brought together digital rights activists, lawyers, human rights defenders from Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya to discuss and build support around major digital rights threats in the region.

Additionally in 2013, Mr Tungali started the Mabigwa Forum, an annual gathering that brings together emerging leaders from different sectors to connect, inspire, and get inspired. This annual event has inspired many emerging leaders in the Congo and supported them into expanding their business reach, improve their leadership capabilities and give them access to a network of like-minded leaders on whom they can rely on.

In February 2016, Tungali started a multi-services company, Smart Services Sarl, specialized, among others, in translation and interpretation services, benefiting individuals as well as companies. Smart Services Sarl has served the major humanitarian organizations operating in the region in their langage needs. The Congo being a Francophone country and many of these international organizations coming from English speaking countries, the latter have relied on the support of this company to provide language proffessional services. Mr Tungali is a sworn interpreter.

His work experience includes working with UNICEF DRC as Consultant Communications and Advocacy; being the Field Officer of Peace One Day, where he supported and represented the British peace-making organization's efforts in the DRC and the Great Lakes Region of Africa for their Peace Campaign 2014. Arsene also worked as Web Editor with Mutaani Project where he was in charge of producing articles for the website and training web journalists in web content production. Before joining Mutaani Project, he worked in the same capacity for Now Africa CAN. He was also associated with The Congo Tree as a leadership trainer and Mentor

ICT policy and Internet governance

Mr Tungali is consulting in Internet governance projects and initiatives since 2011 when he first attended the UN's Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a youth participant. He then was involved in IG related debates on a local, regional and global levels, attending the African IGF in 2013 and in 2016 (after he went to the 2016 African School on IG in Durban, South Africa), the global IGF as an Internet Society Ambassador (2015 and 2016). At the IGF, he is either a speaker at various workshops or a session organizer on topics ranging from child online safety, participation of civil society in Internet governance, cyber security and youth participation in discussions. He does research, speaks at conferences and meetings on Internet freedom in Africa and in the world. He is one of the prominent voices fighting Internet shutdowns in Africa and worldwide.

ICANN 51 in Los Angeles was Tungali's first ICANN Meeting, and as an ICANN Fellow, was one of the first young people in the DRC to attend meetings like ICANN and IGF. He then got interested and joined working groups, constituencies such as the Non Commercial User Constituency (NCUC, a constituency under the NCSG) and is now very interested in the African region DNS policy development. He then came back for the ICANN 55 meeting in Marrakech and ICANN 59 in Johannesbourg as a returning fellow and coach. Tungali was elected to join the GNSO Council (seated at ICANN60 in Abu Dhabi) for a two years term, representing the Non Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG).

Of what he hopes to accomplish in ICT in the future, Mr Tungali says, "My biggest plan is to engage more young people in my country in Internet related topics mainly regarding their online presence. The DRC is a fast growing its internet community so many young people have started using internet. I feel it is time to prepare them on how they can best benefit from the Internet and influence its policies." He is open to all new opportunities that will help young people in the DRC and hopes to engage in constructive discussions.