Dear Prof. Nii Quaynor, convener of AfNOG, dear Nancy Dotse, AfNOG coordinator, our host the
Government of DRC, distinguished friends, and participants of the African and global Internet
community, greetings from Addis Ababa. It's a great pleasure and privilege to say a few words to this
community that are a special place for me. to it has made it that we cannot meet face to face for the
second year in a row. But I do hope that our grand gathering will be back next year. It will be more
than a year that we are living in the first, and I hope the only pandemic of our lifetime.
What a sad year. More than 170 million people contracted COVID-19, amongst which 3.5 million lost
their lives. COVID-19 also changed our way of life, maybe in a lasting manner. The last year, many
countries around the world, and many in Africa, had mandates of complete lock downs, and all kinds of
movement restrictions. But, the Internet has saved us from an even darker year. Almost everywhere in
the world, businesses, banks, government services, and education, moved online at previously unknown
rates. People started to work and study remotely, and access vital public services such as health
information online. We could even have our African Internet Summit online in spite of the impossibility
of traveling.
One good side effect of COVID-19 on our continent is that it is as if, suddenly, many Africans started to
appreciate the opportunities provided by digital technologies. However, sadly, there are many more
Africans that do not enjoy connectivity, than those that have access to the Internet, since only one in
three Africans is an Internet user, compared to one in two for the rest of the world. What is even more
worrying is that the trend shows that the growth rate was slowing down, at least until 2019, which is
latest reliable number. But I do hope that, with many activities moving online during the pandemic,
governments, regulators, operators, and other stakeholders, realized that Internet connectivity is
essential in people's lives, and do more to connect the remaining unconnected people.
At Internet Society, we are trying to do our part by proposing complementary solutions that we call
Community Networks to connect communities that are often left out, since connecting them is not
commercially viable for traditional operators. Community networks are networks built by the
community, for the community, and operated by the community itself. The Internet Society has been a
strong supporter of community networks for over a decade. We work with people and partners from places
as different as the mountain hills in Greece, a village in Zimbabwe, or neighborhoods in New York
City, so that they are empowered to build, manage, and use their own networks. We do this through
trainings, promoting funding and partnerships to help with deployments, and advocating for policies
that make more community networks possible.
In addition to bringing the Internet to more people, we also work on making it better. In particular, for
more than a decade, we have been supporting the development and deployment of Internet Exchange
Point infrastructure. In 2020, we supported IXPs with technical expertise, training, and equipment,
in 12 African countries. On this occasion, I would like to thank our organizational members, such as
AFRINIC, that support a lot of the work that we do, like, for example the community driven Peering
Series, dedicated to printing faster and more affordable Internet to Africa.
One area where we are relatively newcomers, but where we have done considerable work in the last
year and a half, is in measuring the Internet. We started this project since we realized that we, as
well as other stakeholders of the Internet development field, are often working in the dark,
since we don't have enough data to tell us whether what we do is taking the Internet in the right
direction. To bridge this gap, ISOC is building Internet Society Pulse, a site which consolidates
trusted third party Internet measurement data from various sources in a single platform. We use the
data to examine Internet trends, and tell data-driven stories, so that everyone, everywhere,
can understand the health, availability, and evolution of the Internet. I encourage everyone
who's interested in Internet evolution, to use, analyze, and share the data presented on Internet
Society Pulse in their work and research.
In Africa, with our partner AFRINIC, we focus on Internet resilience, since we realize that there are
many issues in this area, and not enough data.
One other area that we are passionate about is the trustworthiness of the Internet. Unless we trust it,
we can't choose it for most of the applications that have become critical for our lives today. I don't
need to tell this audience, that probably the most important tool to make our communication secure and
trustworthy is end-to-end encryption. Effective encryption is key to secure online communication for
everything, from financial transactions, to health care. It is a foundational component upon which a
trustworthy Internet is built. However, encryption is currently under threat. Some governments and
organizations are pushing to weaken encryption, with the objective to fight crime. But, we strongly
believe that weakening encryption would go against their objective, and not only undermine efforts to
prevent crime, but also create a dangerous precedent, that will compromise the personal
security of billions of people, and the national security of countries around the world. That's why,
at the Internet Society, our work on encryption focuses on promoting and defending the use of
encryption around the world.
Another important area for security is routing security. As most of you know, the routing system
was not designed to independently verify that the routes claims of individual networks, making it a
relatively easy target for bad actors. New tools and practices have since been developed to make routing
secure but, as all IETF standards, they are voluntary and not all operators implement them,
putting all of us at risk. MANRS, or Mutually Agreed Norms for Routing Security, addresses this problem
by establishing a security baseline of concrete actions for network operators. We need you, the
African Internet community, to promote MANRS, so that we make the Internet more secure.
Last but not least, a fundamental threat for the Internet is an attack on its model. We all love the
Internet because it is open and global, in addition to being secure and trustworthy. We take it for
granted. But, it's not sure that these properties will be maintained for future generations. There are
people who believe in a different order. To maintain the Internet that we love, we need to recognize what
makes it unique, and protect it. That's why the Internet Society has created the Internet Impact
Assessment Toolkit. The toolkit is a regulatory assessment tool to help policymakers, technologists,
and Internet users, analyze how decisions and trends could impact the architecture of the Internet. It
defines the critical properties that underpin the Internet's success, and helps us ensure our actions
allow the Internet to reach its full potential, and bring connectivity, innovation, and empowerment to
everyone.
Finally, last year was the first year for the implementation of our 5 year strategic plan, which
goals are to work to towards an open, globally connected, secure and trustworthy Internet for
everyone. As our 2020 Impact [Report] shows, we are making progress towards achieving our goals. It
describes the actions made to improving online traffic security, and improve Internet access for
individuals and communities around the continent, during this unique year. I would like to invite you
to reach that impact report. It is also your impact, since our community is central to our work.
Finally, I would like to welcome everyone to this virtual African Internet Summit. I'm sure there will
be interesting discussions that I would encourage everyone to attend. Thank you very much for
listening. I wish us all a successful African Internet Summit.