[AfriNIC-announce] About the change of AfriNIC-9 venue!

[Adiel A. Akplogan]

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, the AfriNIC-9 will now be held in Mauritius instead of Addis
Ababa (Ethiopia) as originally planned. This is a unique situation which
has affected us all. Many of you have written to us to inquire about what
happened and to propose your help. Thanks to you all and your continued
support to what we are trying to do at AfriNIC for our Region.

We sincerely apologize for the short notice in change of venue. The previous
host, ETC (Ethiopia Telecommunication Corporation) notified us that "for some
serious reason that needs time to clear and settle", they have been obliged
to pend and postpone hosting the AfriNIC-9 meeting. After some 
investigations to
try to understand what is happening, it comes to our attention that 
the decision
comes from the Government who has requested them to suspend the hosting of
AfriNIC-9 meeting because they are suspecting AfriNIC to have some 
hidden agenda
with the meeting in Addis Ababa and which has to do with 
"dotAfrica".  According
to the article reproduced bellow, the bid for dotAfrica presented by a Company
(leaded by and Ethiopian) has been sabotaged by AfriNIC which prevent her to
settle the Headquarters in Ethiopia. According to information we have been
able to collect, she claimed that AfriNIC want to host "dotAfrica" in South
Africa or Mauritius so is against Ethiopia interests by doing so.

Let's me precise here that dotAfrica and domain names businesses are not part
of AfriNIC's activities. This serious misunderstanding of what AfriNIC is
exactly and its role in the community injected by a person claiming to be the
defender of Africa, has unfortunately denied Ethiopia a chance to host this
important African technical community meeting. Indeed, AfriNIC which mission
is, amongst other to "to support Internet technology usage and development,
and promoting Internet governance" in Africa welcomes the opportunity to have
a domain (dotAfrica) that will identify the African landscape on the Internet.
AfriNIC will probably support any Open, transparent and bottom up initiative
to have a dotAfrica domain for the region but will never run or participate
in doing any business related to that domain names or any other.

AfriNIC remains a service to the community and strongly disagree with personal
interests and political pressures on its bottom up processes. AfriNIC developed
its legitimacy from the community and will remain a community driven 
organisation
as are the four other Regional Numbers Registries. We have already run our
Public Policy meeting in eight  other countries without any issues. Our main
objective has always been to raise awareness among the local community of  the
country we are visiting and involve them more into the process.

AfriNIC remains open to all of us.

Let's keep focused on our numerous objectives and challenges in an open
transparent with a systematic multi-stakeholder approach.

The whole story is now released by the local press and available at:
http://www.ethiopianreporter.com/content/view/3048/54/. A very quick English
translation is also attached.

Kind Regards.


______________________________________________________________________
Adiel A. Akplogan                            Tel. +230 466 66 16
Chief Executive Officer, AfriNIC             Fax: +230 466 67 58
adiel at afrinic.net - www.afrinic.net          sip: adiel at voip.afrinic.net
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Register to attend AfriNIC-9 Meeting in Mauritius: 22-28 November 2008
http://meeting.afrinic.net/afrinic9/index.htm  
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