The Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) in partnership with the Internet Society Chapter Uganda and the ICT Association of Uganda (ICTAU) hosted the Uganda Internet Governance Forum (UIGF) at the Hive Colab, Kamyokya.
The one-day Forum, whose theme was “Harnessing Internet Development in Uganda: Connecting the last mile”, was a multi-stakeholder event that involved representatives from government, civil society, academia, private sector entities and individuals interested in Internet Governance (IG) issues. The objectives of this Forum were to discuss obstacles to internet access in Uganda, establish the key current internet governance issues relevant to the country, and build consensus on national and regional positions around IG issues.
The national forum also discussed the outcomes from the regional East Africa Internet Governance Forum held in Burundi last month. Much emphasis at the Forum was put on Promoting online safety, having in place monitoring mechanisms in main access areas that is internet café to protect children accessing internet in public places like internet cafes, Need to launch a program sensitizing parents about internet hazards, for their own safety and that of their children.
Infrastructure of IPv6 was another tabled aspect at the Forum, most equipment in networking and computing is IPv6 ready; as are all operating systems coming out now; even those ones on the market are IPV6 ready. High cost in deploying IPv6: Providers find the cost prohibitive and are not willing to invest in infrastructure where they see no critical mass of content to make it profitable for them.
So Government as a single entity should adopt IPv6 as a standard deployment for all the infrastructure they are rolling out then the providers would follow, as they are in it to make profit as compared to being charities. The proceedings of this year’s Forum will also be presented at the Second African Internet Governance Forum to be held in Nairobi September 24-26, 2013 and the global Internet Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia October 22-25, 2013.
