Group mentality and ICANN GAC Advice: Another case of African misdirected and treacherous destiny

Is Africa falling to another trap of group mentality and uninformed choices? Traditionally nations and especially when taken as continents have been known to take collective decisions. Just recently in the WCIT Dubai, there was mass failure of the delegates to agree on a treaty that had been crafted to replace the existing International Telecommunications Regulations that last so any substantive amendments in the 80’s.

Several countries clearly articulated their displeasure at some controversial sections of the new ITR’s and it was clear that they had made their informed choices, “It’s with a heavy heart and a sense of missed opportunities that the US must communicate that it’s not able to sign the agreement in the current form,” said Terry Kramer the US ambassador to the World Conference on International Telecommunications (Wcit), Negotiators from Denmark, Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Greece, Portugal, Finland, Chile, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Kenya said they would need to consult with their national governments about how to proceed and would also not be able to sign the treaty as planned on Friday.

Dr. Bitange Ndemo, who led the Kenyan delegation to the Dubai conference, stood with the U.S. in opposing Internet-related language that made it impossible for the U.S. delegation to sign on to the treaty. Dr Ndemo said many of the countries that did sign on had been coerced.
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 Another case that is currently brewing and may affect the future of internet in Africa is the .africa case that is being bitterly contested between two applicants. Just recently ICANN released the GAC early warnings with which Africa presented 17 warnings on DotConnectAfrica. However the Warnings were all the same in text and spirit meaning that they had been lobbied for.   Such can be traced from the IGF Baku conference where intense lobbying by the ccTLDs present was done and letters sent out to object the applicant DotConnectAfrica.

The speaker said “(Thank you very much) not all of you were here this morning and we are approaching a vital step in putting up objections for the Africa application for Africa and the support of African members who came up with a form that is completed, we would like to request all of the member countries and send the form back filled in.  Anyone who is interested in it, I will send the form to you.”

Its important to note that most of the objections and early warning may have indeed been dome in a rushed manner without due consultation with the relevant offices and ministers and ministerial secretaries and even the presidents may be duly surprised to hear that their country objected.

This sets a bad precedence especially when the evaluators start asking questions.  Its improper that such letters could go out without the full knowledge or advice by the foreign affairs or ICT ministries who will be hard pressed to explain the implications to their governments or parliament when .africa fails to suffice due to the complicated and unclear nature of the application fronted by Uniforum who together with AU are pushing for the mass objections.

DotConnectAfrica in its response has said “ In general, all the notices are similar, meaning that they all emanated from a common source, which further implies that the respective governments had no independence of action in submitting this presumably spurious GAC Early Warning Advice letters against DCA’s application to the ICANN GAC.   We believe that the governments were teleguided (or manipulated) into submitting these GAC Early Warning Advice, and as such, cannot really be considered as authentic in most cases.  It is simply the outcome of a coordinated action which African country governments are being coerced to support, and we believe that actual governmental consultations with respective African country governments has not been done in many cases.”