[AfrICANN-discuss] ICANN 2016 Nominating Committee Announces Selections - unfortunate Africa d

[SM]

Hi Barrack,
At 00:14 01-09-2016, Barrack Otieno wrote:
>I have managed to download it on my end and sent it to you. You could
>as well check under the resources section.

I found out what I did wrong.  The red link did not appear as I 
switched to "French" when I first visited the website.  The way to 
fix that is to click on "English".

>Thank you for the feedback. I also appreciate the fact that the
>African community is discussing this matter that was raised by Dr.
>Nyirenda. It is a common secret that we have experienced some tensions
>whenever we have elections for our regional organizations based on
>regional or language issues. This issue has been discussed in many
>meetings including at the Africa Internet Summit. Going forward we
>should continuously be deliberate and intentional in ensuring that
>leadership roles are distributed in a way that reflects regional
>balance akin to what AFRINIC does. Be that as it may , i am also
>cognizant of the fact that it becomes harder to implement this at an
>International (ICANN) Level. However, this is something that the
>NOMCOM can look into to enhance and encourage  participation from
>Sub-regions. I think the IETF really needs it as well if we are to
>increase participation from the African Region as discussed during the
>Africa Internet Summit this year.

There has been controversies prior to the past Afrinic (director) 
elections.  It is better if people can discuss about their 
concerns.  One of the issues with regional restrictions is that you 
can end up having to choose a person from a region who is not 
involved and ignore candidates from another region who is 
involved.  In theory the issue should not be a problem if the 
regional restriction covers a wider area, e.g. a continent.

I cannot speak for the IETF.  I don't recall seeing any discussion 
about participation from people in Africa.  You can verify whether a 
person participates by looking at the messages at 
https://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/maillist.html

 From what I heard, participation is encouraged through 
fellowships.  As Seun mentioned, "While I know some people only 
attend conferences for travel experience (which does not only happen 
to Africans) ..." ( 
https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/africann/2014-March/008730.html 
).  Given the results, it is doubtful that fellowships encourages 
participation.

It is not possible to tackle the challenges if everything is 
described as a success.

Regards,
-sm