Welcome to Nairobi, ICANN

What you need to know:

  • Policymakers in government, who are more at home and comfortable with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), quietly wish that whatever ICANN is doing could eventually be taken up and done by the state-driven ITU.
  • The key ingredient with the ICANN multi-stakeholder approach is that every stakeholder gets to have equal weight.

ICANN, the global body that governs the internet space, is opening its Africa engagement office on Tuesday May 24, 2016, and it will be based in Nairobi.

This is a big deal that is likely to attract less attention than it deserves, mainly because the common man in Africa, busy struggling with bread-and-butter issues, has less time to worry about how the internet is run or who doing it.

On the other extreme, policymakers in government, who are more at home and comfortable with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), quietly wish that whatever ICANN is doing could eventually be taken up and done by the state-driven ITU.

The tension between ITU and ICANN is likely to persist for a while but it should not cloud the momentous occasion of Nairobi becoming the ICANN engagement centre for Africa.

Essentially, Kenya is being given the privilege to host, and implicitly an advantage, as far as setting the geo-political agenda for internet governance is concerned. Indeed the office is designed to serve the whole of Africa but no one can ignore the home-ground advantages that come with being host.

One can begin to see the potential and possibilities this ICANN office could bring, the way the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Gigiri has given Nairobi global prominence and spawned secondary economic activities around it.

What exactly does ICANN do in terms of governing the internet? This logical layer chart tries to simplify its governance role into three key activities – stakeholder engagement, internet policy implementation and institutional coordination.

DICTATORIAL TENDENCIES

ICANN implements internet policies that are discussed by multiple stakeholders using a bottom-up approach.  Stakeholders include academia, business organisations, civil society, government and individual internet users, amongst others.

The key ingredient in the ICANN multi-stakeholder approach is that every stakeholder gets to have equal weight. In other words, ideas are actually considered on their own merit rather than on who is presenting them, which is quite a contrast to the way state actors operate, particularly in regimes with dictatorial tendencies.

Even more difficult for some to fathom is the fact that decisions between all these stakeholders are arrived at through what is known as "rough consensus"; a general judgment and agreement on what is considered to be the popular direction carries the day.

Of course the multi-stakeholder approach is not without its critics, but it is what has led to the rapid evolution of the internet, courtesy of ICANN’s coordinating role.

ICANN coordinates a host of internet actors such as those who manage the top-level domains, root servers and internet numbers, amongst others. It does this is to ensure that the internet remains stable, secure and globally unified.

It is definitely an honour for Kenya to host such an institution on behalf of the African continent.  Please let’s welcome ICANN to Nairobi and hope that Kenyans can rally around it in order to harness the opportunities it offers.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jwalu