Highlights Monday 28 November

AFRINIC-25 was officially opened by Rooba Moorghen Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of  Technology, Communication and Innovation  in Mauritius spoke about the plan for Mauritius to become a hub of innovation and business, a strategy that  includes making Mauritius a smart island through various programs targeting all stakeholders. Ms Moorghen emphasised on the need for everyone to move to the IPv6 as the pool of IPv4 is being depleted in Africa as is the case in other RIRs, especially with the Internet of Things. She thanked AFRINIC for helping the Government of Mauritius with the design of their IPv6 deployment roadmap. 

Sunday Folayan, AFRINIC Board Chair, welcomed the dignitaries and attendees and thanked the sponsors for their support and generosity. Mr. Folayan spoke about AFRINIC and gave an overview of the organisation, the AFRINIC Meetings and highlighted improvements in Board transparency and corporate governance. He also encouraged the attendees to participate in the policy discussions sessions later in the week. 

Barrett, AFRINIC CEO, welcomed the dignitaries and thanked the sponsors and his staff. He gave an overview of the post-IANA Oversight.

Transition world and reassured the attendees that it's still 'business as usual' for AFRINIC and the other RIRs. He talked about IPv4 exhaustion and urged everyone to think more seriously about getting their deployments completed before the IPv4 free pool is exhausted. He spoke briefly about the policy proposals up for discussion on Tuesday and further encouraged everyone to participate in the proceedings.

 

Plenary Presentations

After the Opening Ceremony, the day continued with plenary presentations:

• FIRE Program Updates - Mwendwa Kivuva

• First IETF experience - Stephen Honlue

• ICANN Africa Strategy Update - Pierre Dandjinou, Bob Ochieng and Yaovi Atohoun

• African Internet Measurement Observatory- Gareth Tyson

After lunch, technical presentations were given:

• Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Framework for Mauritius - Kaleem Usmani
• Rolling the Root Zone DNSSEC Key Signing Key- Edward Lewis
• Looking for Latency Clusters in Africa - Amreesh Phokeer and Agustin Formoso

The afternoon session's focus was on IPv6 deployment in Africa: 

• AFRINIC’s new IPv6 testing and certification platform - Mukom Tamon
• Are We There Yet? IPv6 as Related to GDP per Capita- Alain Durand
• NAT64/DNS64 experiments from Go6lab- Jan Žorž

Videos of all presentations can be found here.

MoU AFRINIC-ATI Ceremony

The signing ceremony of the MoU between AFRINIC and and Agence Tunisien d’Internet () took place on Monday afternoon. Mr. Jawher Ferjaoui, CEO ATI, and Alan Barrett, CEO AFRINIC, signed the MoU which documents the two organisations' mutual commitment to support each others work in terms of IPv6 deployment awareness building, outreach, training and capacity building. 

 

 

 

 

Newcomers' Session

Over 35 people attended the Newcomers' Session on Monday morning to find out more about AFRINIC, how the AFRINIC Meetings work, who the key players in the local, regional and global Internet industry are and how to get the most out of their meeting experience. 

FIRE Africa Workshop and FIRE Africa Program Updates

Nine FIRE Africa grantee and awardees have travelled to Mauritius to attend a two-day FIRE Workshop (closed sessions). During the workshop, attendees will learn various entrepreneurial skills, including leadership skills, project management, and business pitching in Mauritius.

 In addition the the training, these African tech entrepreneurs will be able to network with the African Internet community and promote their organisations, activities and products throughout the meeting week.

During the first session of the day, FIRE Africa Project Manager Mwendwa Kivuva gave an overview of the work of the FIRE Africa program and highlighted some of the amazing projects that the programme has supported. You can find out more about the Grants and Awards that FIRE Africa distributes on our dedicated website or talk to Mwendwa during any of the breaks or socials.

What People are Saying

Caroline Mwangi from the Copy Cat Group from Kenya: '' This is my second meeting, I had a very good experience on training in Botswana at AIS'16...''

Watch the full video interview.

Opening Cocktail

The day's hard work culminated in a relaxing Opening Cocktail, where attendees had the chance to network informally and enjoy the cooler Mauritius evening air. Mr. Arvind Boodhoo, Operations and Administration Manager at Harel Mallac Technologies (HMT) and Opening Cocktail sponsor, opened the event and welcomed the attendees to Mauritius. Harel Mallac made a video presentation followed by Alan Barrett, CEO AFRINIC, who thanked Mr. Boodhoo for his support and gave a short speech.

 

 

 

 

Stay Informed!

• Don't forget, you can also keep up-to-date by following our Twitter account (tag your photos and comments with the #AFRINIC25 hashtag), liking our Facebook page and following our Flickr account. 
• Find out more about the policy proposals we'll be discussing on Tuesday 28 November during the Policy Development Working Group (PDWG) sessions.
• View the Agenda | Find out how to participate remotely.

 

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