Enhancing Engagement in ICANN in East Africa

Made Possible by:

It is our pleasure to present to you a summary of ICANNWiki’s program to enhance local content and engagement in East Africa. This work was accomplished in a few short months and has grown rapidly. It was with Amazon's support that we were able to identify local needs, provide funding for general event expenses and develop a program that was educational, sustainable and scalable. Stakeholders in East Africa are now able to refine their connections to the Internet governance space and making it theirs. Without Amazon's support, this world we know as the Internet governance and policy space would be less rich, diverse and empowered. Thank you for your support of our project.

Background

After ICANN 55 in Marrakech, a number of stakeholders from ICANN’s Fellow and NextGen programs expressed a desire to replicate the Edit-a-thon in their home countries. Specifically, Bonface Witaba (ICANN Fellow, Kenya), Oyewole Oginni (NextGen, Cameroon) and Matogoro Jabhera (NextGen, Tanzania) approached our team to build home-grown events that would incorporate local ICTs as well as ICANN with an aim to broaden awareness of relevant topics within the Internet governance space.

Internet Governance Youth Community Workshop - University of Dodoma

Much like the ICANNWiki Edit-a-thon itself, the events unfolded in a granular fashion. Two small events were held in Nairobi, Kenya, where Bonface Witaba explained the project and its goals. These two events had relatively small participation, but set the stage for our event at the University of Dodoma which had a fantastic turn-out. Event details are as follows:

Event Activities:

Number of Participants: 40

Number of Active Editors: 22

Number of Articles Translated to Swahili: 145

Number of New Articles Created: 138

Event Partners:

Amazon
tzNIC
ICANN
University of Dodoma

Event Images:

Local Media Coverage & Coordinator Presentation Videos

Nairobi Events

Held June 16, 2016 at the Paris Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya.

The overarching aim was to translate and contribute articles through the one day Edit-a-thon session. The Edit-a-thon managed to attract 16 participants (most of whom had attended the previous ICANNWiki workshop that was held earlier on 6^th June).

Participants worked on a minimum of at-least 5 articles each (a total of 100 article stubs for the day were completed).

Next Steps

Following the successful edit-a-thon event, the facilitators will be working on a glossary of terms to be translated at a possible 3^rd edit-a-thon session ahead of the Tanzania capacity building workshop.

Strathmore University (Nairobi) has expressed interest in hosting the events for a period of 6-12 months i.e. 1 workshop per month (for their university students).

The university will offer a room that can accommodate 30-50 participants, with free Wi-Fi, and an aide/resource person. ICANNWiki's role will be to facilitate the edit-a-thon as well as cater for meals/refreshments at affordable student rates (at the students’ caféteria).

Strathmore University Event