Tunisia to host the 29th AFRINIC Public Policy Meeting

Tunisia will in November host hundreds of key players in the African and global Internet industry sector at the 29th public policy meeting of the African Network Information Center (AFRINIC).

The event dubbed AFRINIC 29 will be a platform for technocrats and business to discuss policies, trends, resources and challenges in growing Internet for sustainable development in Africa and the Indian Ocean Region. It is being hosted by AFRINIC in collaboration with the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI) under the patronage of the Ministry of Technology and Digital economy.

The event which is held annually consists of keynote speeches, policy discussions, seminars, workshops, tutorials and other forums for sharing ICT knowledge within the African region. The 2017 edition was held in Lagos and was attended by over 200 delegates from 34 countries around the world.

Whereas Internet penetration in Africa has grown from 11% to 28.6% in just 5 years despite challenges such as cyber security, it is lower when compared to the rest of the world. Measurable parameters such IP address allocations show that the continent is quite behind.

In April 2017, AFRINIC entered the depletion phase of fourth version of IP Addresses (IPv4) way behind of the other four continental regional Internet registries who are already distributing the newest version IPv6 in earnest.