By Haru Mutasa
A Sudanese delegate at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) conference in Cape Town stands and speaks about his home country.
"In Sudan we started what is called the Free Internet system where Internet users only paid for local call costs and not ISP costs," he
began, "The number of Internet users tripled impressively. Then the numbers stopped growing and we found out it was because many Sudanese
people did not have access to computers to enable them to connect to the Internet in the first place."
'Our people need to have a say in what is going on' Access and the cost of computer hardware is just one obstacle to Internet development on a continent where less than one percent of
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the population has access to the Internet.
"If you want to bridge the Internet gap between yourself and someone else, you have to run faster," said Clement Dzidonu, a member of the
regional Internet group Africa At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC). "But how can we bridge the digital divide if we are not engaging our
communities? Charity begins at home and by home I mean both at the individual country and organisational level. For ALAC the issue of
governance is more about people engagement and involvement."
The African branch of ALAC, was set up to give and encourage Africa's Internet users the opportunity to actively participate in matters and
decisions made concerning the Internet and how they are affected as users. This is one of several At-Large Communities around the world.
'Africans are being left out of the process'
"Our organisation aims to do a lot of things," said Dzidonu, "Promote Africa's role in Internet governance space, facilitate Africa's participation in global Internet decision making processes and give Internet users a platform to get involved and influence policies related to the Internet and its use."
He was addressing delegates at the ICANN At-Large meeting in Cape Town on Friday, a meeting which culminates in a series of workshops and forum
discussions educating people on how they can and should become "not only active but informative players on the Internet".
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