ICANN Appoints Three Africans Into Its New Leadership Roles

The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) has announced the individuals who will occupy nine new leadership positions. Africans have taken up three of these global leadership positions.

Kenyan Catherine Adeya was appointed to the Board of Directors; Nigerian Bakola Oronti was appointed to the At Large Advisory Committee; and Tunisian Wafa Dahmani was the only member appointed to the Country Code Names Supporting Organization Council. In the 155 applications received for these positions, Africans were the highest in number with 39 percent of all applications.

Catherine Adeya has been appointed alongside Sarah Deutsch (North America) to the board of directors. Anupam Agrawal (Asia Pacific) was the only individual to be appointed to the Public Technical Identifiers Board of Directors.

Bukola was appointed alongside Claire Craig (Latin America) and Justine Chew (Asia Pacific) to the At Large Advisory Committee. Desiree Zeljka Miloshevic (Europe) and Paul McGady (North America) were both appointed to the Generic Names Supporting Organization Council.

The nine new appointees will begin their terms after the conclusion of the ICANN78 Annual General Meeting in October.

As Africa led in the number of completed applications received, Asia Pacific constituted 25 percent of applications received. 12 percent of applications were from North America, 15 percent were from Latin America, while 9 percent were from Europe.

The NomCom is charged with recruiting and selecting a portion of ICANN’s leadership. In doing so, the NomCom is mandated to ensure that ICANN’s overall leadership is diverse in geography, culture, skills, experience, and perspective.

“The 2023 Nominating Committee is thankful for the numerous applications received. Although the NomCom cannot appoint everyone who applied, we encourage all applicants to continue participating, as your involvement is critical to ICANN’s mission,” said NomCom Chair Vanda Scartezini.

ICANN’s mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.