About East Africa IGF
The EAIGF regroups East African stakeholders to build a common understanding of East Africa Internet governance issues to enable meaningful participation in global Internet policy, governance and development. The participating nations are Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi/em>
The EA-IGF, which first convened in 2008, aims at creating a community of practice that will, in the long term, become a sustaining foundation for meaningful participation of East African stakeholders in internet public policy debates at the national, regional and international level.
The EAIGF aims at creating awareness, instituting a consensus building process to develop a common understanding of East Africa Internet governance issues as well as building policy capacity in order to enable meaningful participation in global Internet policy, governance and development.
With the increased access to broadband infrastructure in the East Africa region and the continued spread of sophisticated mobile services, understanding and addressing Internet policy issues has become a priority. The national and regional EA-IGF’s will help prepare East African stakeholders to address the opportunities, strengths and challenges that arise, as well as ensuring that they have a voice in shaping Internet policy decisions at the global level.
The EA-IGF model allows for the informed participation, contribution and engagement of community members through research, sharing of experiences, skills-sharing, problem-solving and addressing common challenges, and the creation of new knowledge. The forum follows a bottom-up multi-stakeholder approach, which begins at the national level through mailing list discussions in the five East African countries, followed by national face-to-face IGFs, which continue the discussions and debate and go further to validate the issues identified through mailing list discussions and begin to explore recommendations and solutions.