The main African Internet issue is that of affordable access, CEO Paul Twomey said at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Cape Town this morning.
He noted that ICANN does not provide the physical infrastructure for Internet access. "There is great pressure [in Africa] for affordable access to the Internet. ICANN is not about infrastructure," Twomey said in response to remarks by minister of communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.
"Our commitment to access is that each new voice has access to the world and the world has access to each new voice," he said.
Matsepe-Casaburri said in her speech earlier: "At the outset I acknowledge that naming and numbering are vital to the governance of the Internet. But they are not the only concerns - indeed affordable and reliable access within a consistent legal environment is similarly fundamental and need to be addressed."
She also said it is no secret that the South African government has been critical of the existing Internet governance structures, "because they were established by and skewed in favour of those who first implemented these technologies, as this had the consequence of potentially disadvantaging those who are only now accessing these technologies, particularly those who do not yet have access".
Matsepe-Casaburri praised ICANN and Mike Lawrie, the previous administrator of the .za domain name, for the work done for the re-delegation of the .za country code top level domain to the new South African administrator, the Domain Name Authority. The minister got a standing ovation for her praise of Lawrie.
She also welcomed the provisional recognition of the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) by the ICANN board - the last stage before official recognition.
The ICANN meeting will continue in Cape Town until Sunday. Some of the topics on the ICANN agenda are the election of two new board members, new generic top level domain strategy, implementation of the recent inter-registrar transfer policy, finalising proposals for the .net re-bid, promoting understanding of international domain names, and the advancing of the interests of individual Internet user communities through its "At-Large" forum.
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