Dr. Sami Salih, founder and chair of the Sudanese IPv6 Task Force (SDv6TF) since 2010. During his position at the telecom regulatory authority (NTC Sudan) as head of R&D he participated in many events organized by ICT related organizations such as ITU, AfriNIC, ICANN and other regional and international events since 2006.
Furthermore, he established an authorized training center for IPv6 in Sudan in collaboration with NAV6 Malaysia. He is appointed by ITU to develop national strategic migration plans toward deploying IPv6 in Chad, Comoros, Somalia, Yemen, and Palestine. Currently as SudREN CEO, he conducts a project to provide ICT with IPv6 enabled for all Sudanese Institutions. From his participation at the AfriSIG15, he aims to share the Sudanese experience toward being among the first few countries in Africa who exchange traffic using IPv6.
The African School of Internet Governance, a very diverse group coming from different backgrounds, specialist, interest, and societies. They are gathered in one room and share just one thing, all of them are Internet advocates and they willing to contribute the developing of Africa by using ICTs.
I got the chance to participate in many International summits addressing ICT. Since 2006 I attend more than 10 global events and I had the experience to taking hours and days try to find a compromise between the very diverse opinions.
In most of those symposium, few Africans are participate, some of them just attend without making any contribution. Event after event organized in our continent, the experts from outside come to tell us how to manage our resources?!
I my home country, Sudan, the Ministry of ICT is playing a great role in supporting initiative from youth. We have a very good worldwide rank regarding native IPv6 traffic, we setup the Sudanese Network Operator Group (SdNOG) as the first national NOG in the region, and we also setup an IGF with active participation from all stakeholders just to name a few.
On the other hand, the Sudanese ICT community suffering from the unfair US sanctions preventing the community from using many Internet service and website. In this circumstance Internet has been use as a punishment tool and it’s very clear that because of the US control the critical internet resources via oversee ICANN and IANA they hinder Sudanese ICT community from accessing many Internet resources and website. Some of these website are purely academic such as MatLab others are important tools for remote participations as Webex.
We are asking and appealing to the Internet community to correct this situation because no one know what will happen to the Internet if the USG decided to restricted other community from the global network. We are supporting the UN to take over the critical Internet resources and manage it in the same way that ITU manages telecom resources.
Overall, I hope and I believe this group of young, motivated, and much energized fellows will change this. The school gives them the required knowledge and experience to effectively participate in- and contribute to – the development of Internet policies not only in Africa but also worldwide.
I will take all that I see and feel during this fruitful week to my country and I will recommend this school for the Sudanese ICT community.