Lillian Nalwoga from CIPESA Shares the Country Report of Uganda Internet Governace Forum.

By Maureen Agena

During the 3^rd East African Internet Governace forum that started on 11^th August 2010 in Kampala Uganda, Ms. Lillian Nalwoga from CIPESA  one of the organizations sponsoring the event shared the National internet governance report for Uganda. In her introduction, she said that the Ugandan Internet Governance forum started way back in 2006 and since then, 3 national IGF forums have been held.

Ms. Lillian Nalwoga presenting the Ugandan report

Lillian said that the objectives of the forums are to; provide updates on outcomes of key issues identified in the 2009, Create awareness about Uganda’s IG issues, Redefine IG issues that may have been vaguely defined as well as Seek to define new IG issues.

In her recap of the 2009 IGF, Lillian noted that there was need to continue the IGF debate in Uganda and at the global level also to promote access and affordability while getting ready for the landing submarine cables, a call for a change management of the .UG ccTLD , to develop an IPv6 transition strategy for Uganda also calling for review of proposed cyber laws in order to address issues of cyber security and privacy without violating the constitutional rights of citizens, Need to form a national cyber security strategy, the need to have gender balanced ICT policies to address gender imbalances in IG and finally Strengthening  Uganda IXPs.

It was noted that Uganda’s critical internet resources are; Administration, Application, environment and infrastructure. She also added that there is need for re-delegation of the .ug ccTLD by establishing a non-for profit  organization Uganda National Information centre (.ugNIC), establishing  a Board with multi-stakeholder representation, two advisory committees i.e. Technical Advisory Committee &Policy Advisory Committee. Seeking  to designate UCC as the sponsor of the .UG, while the created organization/company will be the technical Manager  was one of the solutions of re-delegating.

Other national reports came in from Emauel Hubemuremyi from Media High Council in Rwanda, Joe Kiragu from KENIC in Kenya and Victor Ciza from AfriRegister in Burundi. The session moderator was Dr. Waudo Siganga.