By Emeka Aginam

Chairman, Africa ICT Alliance, (AfICTA), Dr. Jimson Olufuye at the just concluded United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) open consultation on enhanced cooperation on public policy pertaining to the Internet held in Geneva, Switzerland has said that enhanced cooperation on internet governance would encourage  digital inclusion of Nigeria and rest of the African sub-region.

According to the former President of Information Technology Association of Nigeria, (ITAN), enhanced cooperation (EC) was about encouraging, deepening and enriching cooperation  and collaboration through dialogue on diverse public policy issues pertaining to the Internet.

Enhanced cooperation

With enhanced cooperation, developing economies like Nigeria, he said will be able to climb up the ladder of development through a stable, predictable, secure and sustainable Internet  governance made possible by increased North–South, South-South and North-North cooperation in many areas including removal of bottlenecks to access through increased dialogues  with all stakeholders on for example IPv6 adoption, encouragement of innovation by promoting reward system, plugging gaps in the security of the Internet through increased Research and Development, enthroning the rule of law on the Internet thereby mitigating increasing crime waves on the Internet through collaborative enforcement and administration of justice, creation of Internet based jobs to tackle massive unemployment in the developingworld through increased adoption of eApplications, eGovernment, eHealth, eBusiness, among others.

According to him, EC should have ramifications not only at the regional and international level but most importantly at the national level where law and policy issues emanate in tandem  with the bottom up, multi-stakeholder approach to Internet Governance.

Mandate

He told the gathering that the his submissionsc above were premised on the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Tunis agenda paragraph 34, 35 and 70.

“The WSIS Tunis Agenda directs that the enhanced cooperation process should include participation by relevant international organizations, including inter-governmental,  multistakeholder and private-sector led organizations.

“It is the position of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA), (the voice of the global ICT industry) that dialogue among all stakeholders takes place  continuously to sustain the momentous impact of the Internet on the global economy” he added.

Implementation

He said that so far, at least 10 international organizations handling Internet Policy issues have been playing leading roles in demonstrating enhanced cooperation in their operations and  policy making as facilitated by the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs through its Division for Public Administration and Development

Management

The ten organizations he said are not limited to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), ITU, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Council of Europe, Internet Society (ISOC), OECD, UNESCO, WIPO, Number Resource Organization (NRO) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).