Geneva: Miss.Africa Digital Program Named Finalist in the ITU/UN 2017 EQUALSinTech Awards

ITU and UN Women this week in Geneva, Switzerland announced the Miss.Africa Digital program as one of 15 Finalists and the Winners for the prestigious 2017 EQUALS in Tech Awards. As the flagship event of the EQUALS global network partnership, the annual award event is designed to showcase how ICTs can be used to dramatically improve social, political and economic outcomes for women and girls – and the value that women and girls bring to the technology sectors. This year, there were 293 participants from 72 countries for the EQUALS…

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Announcement of keynote speakers for E-Learning 2015 Conference includes Sophia Bekele

CIO East Africa, one of the media sponsors for the event, reported on the announcement from organizers that the keynote speakers at this international conference of E-Learning Africa 2015. The event the will take place from 20 – 22 May in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the keynote speakers include Ms. Sophia Bekele, Founder/CEO of DotConnectAfrica Group & CBS International USA, Founder of Yes2dotAfrica Campaign; Ethiopia/USA,  Mr. Shai Reshef, University of the People, USA; and Mark Surman of the Mozilla Foundation, USA. CIO Reports: One of the interesting scenes in this event…

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New Multistakeholder Initiative: “My Data Belongs To Me”

A new initiative by the World Summit Award (WSA) initiative seeks to use its global multistakeholder network to push forward personal data ownership and big data issues at UN discussions. At an open discussion, the WSA invited participants to share views on issues with the current system of data use, the need for permission-based access, and steps for further action. The workshop on “Data citizen rights, my data belongs to me” was organised by the WSA on 9 June, parallel to the United Nations World Summit of the Information Society…

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Corporate Governance and International Policy expert Sophia Bekele shares her view on the future of online Security in Africa

Source: CIO East Africa The AU’s Convention on the Establishment of a Credible Legal Framework for Cyber Security in Africa (AUCC) has been the focus of debate recently. DotConnectAfrica was among the first organizations to comment and highlight several issues on the draft legislation In view of this and to further shed light on online security issues in Africa, CIO East Africa editor Mike Ouma sought the views of Ms Sophia Bekele, an international policy advisor on ICT and internet issues. Below are excerpts: As regards the state of online…

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The BRICS Internet Cable: Back to Cable Geopolitics?

News of the laying of a BRICS-cable triggered public attention as news of laying telegraph cables did a century ago. The ‘cable rush’ by Britain, Germany and France – then major industrial and colonial powers – heralded the start of cable geopolitics which still exist today.  Despite all the promises of the end of geography and Internet ‘virtuality’, geography remains as important as ever. Are we facing a renewed interest in cable geo-strategy? In Part 1 of this article, we will look at the emergence of cable geo-strategy. In a…

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Protecting the open Internet may require defunding the ITU. Here’s how to do it.

In the past week, two senior U.S. officials, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and Republican Rep. Greg Walden (Ore.) were quoted as saying the United States should pull funding from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), at least as a last resort, if the U.N. telecommunications body persists in its attempts to regulate the Internet. What’s the ITU? Why do people want to defund it? And what would it take to do so? Read on to find out. What’s the ITU? The ITU was founded in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union, an organization…

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