Anriette Esterhuysen was the executive director of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) - the largest ICT-focused civil society network in the world - from 2000 to 2017. She continues to work with APC as a consultant and convenes the African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG), a joint initiative of APC, the African Union Commission and Research ICT Africa.

Ms. Esterhuysen has served as Chair of the Multistakeholder Advisory Committee of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum. as well as on the African Technical Advisory Committee of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's African Information Society Initiative (1996-1999), the United Nations ICT Task Force (2002-2005), the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Working Group on Financing Mechanisms (2003-2005), the Commission on Science and Technology for Development Working Group on Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Improvements (2011-2012) and on Enhanced Cooperation (2017-2018), the Global Commission on Internet Governance and the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of the IGF (2012-2014).

She was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame as a Global Connecter in 2013 and received an EFF Pioneer Award in 2015. Ms. Esterhuysen serves as a Commissioner on the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace and as a member of the board of directors of the .ZA (South Africa) domain name authority, ZADNA.

Avani Singh is an independent legal consultant and admitted attorney of the High Court of South Africa. She specialises in media freedom, information law and digital rights. Her work over more than a decade has been underpinned by a commitment to the public interest and the important role that access to information holds - both on- and offline - in order to attain accountability and redress, enable the public to make informed decisions, and vindicate the full array of fundamental rights. She has previously practised as an attorney in the Constitutional Litigation Unit at the Legal Resources Centre and in the Media Law team at Webber Wentzel, as well as having been part of co-founding a public interest tech-law consultancy and law firm. Further to this, she has clerked at the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the International Criminal Court, and serves as a member of several boards and working groups.

Avri Doria is a research consultant with a number of contracts with both NGOs and the technical community. She served on the UN Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation I (WGEC) and the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG). She served as a member the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Secretariat and was a member of the IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group (IGF MAG). As a technologist she has been involved in the development of Internet protocols and architectures for over 30 years; is co-chair of a Research Group on Human Rights Protocol Considerations and a member of the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG). She has been active in ICANN policy, was chair of the GNSO Council and is currently a member of the ICANN Board. Avri was awarded the ICANN Multistakeholder Ethos award in 2014.

Bob is a telecommunications Eng. with 10+ years’ experience in the multi-disciplinary Telecoms/ICT industry and Project Management. As the primary representative of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in East and Southern Africa, Bob is charged with developing and executing the organization’s strategic and tactical objectives in the region including: Overseeing, leading and executing ICANN’s engagement in the region with all stakeholders, including governments, the academic, business and legal communities as well non-commercial interests; Monitoring, identifying and analyzing internet related developments, public policy issues and trends, and impact on strategy in the region translating these into practical plans.

After working in providing connectivity to remote health care centres in Latin America, Carlos has devoted the last eight years to studying, developing and supporting community networks around the world. As part of his PhD he co-founded Zenzeleni Networks, and studied the main drivers that could make a community network in rural South Africa sustainable and scalable. After obtaining his doctorate in 2015, he went and studied the common denominators across community networks in Africa, producing a seminal report on the topic, and co-organised the first five editions of the Summit on Community Networks in Africa. For the last four years, he has been with the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), where he co-leads its community networks initiative, overseeing projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia. He also coordinates its policy and regulatory work to create a more enabling regulatory framework for local operators and community networks. As part of that, he has provided training to regional regulatory associations and policy makers in Africa, authored reports and written submissions to public consultations on the topic, and participated frequently as speaker and convener in internet governance and similar telecommunications policy forums.

Chenai Chair’s interest in the ICT sector developed from learning of mobiles for development while writing her Master’s thesis titled, “Mobile Phones for Development: How Have Women in the Informal Sector used their Mobile Phones to Enhance Themselves and their Business?” in 2014. Chenai focuses on issues of ICT access and use and related policy development, and has worked on projects in South Africa, Zambia, Rwanda, Ghana and Kenya. Her areas of research include youth access and use, gendered issues of access and internet governance. She recently completed a policy paper on youth, internet and deprivation in Africa.

Dr. Dawit Bekele is the Regional Vice President-Africa of the Internet Society, an organization that works for an open, globally connected and secure Internet for everyone.He is an Ethiopian citizen living in Addis Ababa. He received undergraduate, Masters and Ph.D. degrees from Université Paul Sabatier in France, all degrees in Computer Science. He also holds a master’s in business leadership from University of South Africa. Prior to joining Internet Society, Dr. Dawit worked at Addis Ababa University on teaching and research positions in computer science. He also started and ran a private company forIn ternet-related services for a number of years.

Ephraim is a trained lawyer, a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP – PMI USA), and an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (the UK and Kenya) and a Certified Professional Mediator (MTI East Africa), with over nine years in the African and global International Trade, Technology, Media and Telecommunications industry.

Between 2014 and 2018 he served as the youngest advisor on Internet Governance to two UN Secretary Generals: Ban Ki–moon and António Guterres. Additionally, since 2012 he has executed international development projects with a diverse range of leading international institutions across 46 African Union member countries and served as an Independent Expert to two ICANN Implementation Advisory Groups.

Presently, Ephraim does research on the nexus of Digital Infrastructures, Digital Trade, Electronic Commerce and Data Protection and Open Data with an international institution, ARTICLE 19. He is also a member of the GFCE Advisory Board, Digital Peace Now, Siasa Place, European Commission GIPO advisory group among other board positions. He is also a full member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU).

Fiona Asonga is a co-consultant of the Internet Society Collaborative Governance Project which is geared towards developing capacity in multi-stakeholder engagements. She is chief executive officer at Technology Service Providers Association which operates the Kenya Internet Exchange Point and Industry Computer Security Incident Response Team.  She is one of the three African representatives on the Number Resource Organization – Number Council where she coordinates numbering resource issues across the five regional internet registries.  She doubles up as a member of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) where she coordinates the development of Global Numbering Resource Policy Development.

Frederico Links is a Namibian journalist, researcher and freedom of expression advocate. As a researcher he is affiliated to Namibia's leading independent think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), where he coordinates a number of projects. In both his journalism and research, Links has a strong focus on good governance, human rights (including digital rights), corruption, rule of law, and transparency and accountability. For the IPPR, he is currently coordinating the 'Mainstreaming human rights in cybercrime law and policy making' project, which is a collaboration with international digital rights organisation Global Partners Digital (GPD).

He is also the coordinator of the Democracy Report project of the IPPR, which is funded by the Finnish Embassy in Namibia, and focuses on the activities and events happening in and around the Namibian parliament, as well as the Namibia Fact Check project, which verifies information and debunks online disinformation. Links also coordinates the Procurement Tracker Namibia project of the IPPR, which monitors public procurement. He is also involved as a fellow in the digital surveillance research project of the Media Policy and Democracy Project (MPDP) of the School of Communication, at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Furthermore, he coordinates a six-country southern Africa-focused digital rights project for the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), funded by the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa (OSISA). Links is the founding and current chairperson of the Access to Information in Namibia (ACTION) Coalition of civil society and media organisations and social activists. He is also the founding and former chairperson of the Namibian Internet Governance Forum (NamIGF).

‘Gbenga Sesan is the Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African social enterprise working on digital inclusion and digital rights through its offices in Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford University. Originally trained as an Electronic & Electrical Engineer at Obafemi Awolowo University, he completed Executive Education programs at Lagos Business School, Oxford University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Santa Clara University and University of the Pacific. ‘Gbenga’s consulting experience includes assignments completed for numerous institutions, including Microsoft, Harvard University and United Nations agencies, among others, in over 30 countries. A Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year and former member of the United Nations Committee of eLeaders on Youth and ICT, he is a CyberStewards Fellow, Crans Montana Forum Fellow, Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow, Ashoka Fellow, Our Common Future Fellow and Cordes Fellow.

Ian Brown is Principal Scientific Officer at the UK government’s Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport; and Senior Fellow with Research ICT Africa’s Digital Policy Programme, where he is researching cyber-security and human rights policy in Africa. He was previously Professor of Information Security and Privacy at the University of Oxford, and a Knowledge Exchange Fellow with the Commonwealth Secretariat and UK National Crime Agency. His academic publications include Regulating Code (2013, MIT Press, with Christopher T. Marsden) and Research Handbook on Governance of the Internet (2012, Edward Elgar).

James Mutandwa Madya holds a Master of Science Degree in Rural and Urban Planning from the University of Zimbabwe. He has a varied career spanning 27 years ranging from development/project planning; road freight transport management; aviation management; and policy formulation and analysis in the housing, logistics and transport, and ICT sectors of Zimbabwe. He is currently deputy director (communications) in Zimbabwe’s Ministry of ICT and Courier Services. James is an alumnus of AfriSIG 2015 and is interested in all aspects of internet governance.

Johan Hellström has worked on digital development (ICT4D) in various ways for more than a decade, including setting up physical telecentres and conducting research on mobile-facilitated participation and crowdsourcing. He has been sitting on the board for Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) and in the advisory council for Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI). Johan attended the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis 2005, and has since had a special interest in internet as a public good that serves development priorities, equality and justice. Johan currently works at the Embassy of Sweden in Dar es Salaam where he oversees research cooperation and is the focal point for innovation. He is the author of The Innovative Use of Mobile Applications in East Africa (2010), and the co-author of “ICT4D Donor Agencies and Networks” (in International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society (2015)), and “Crowdsourcing Development – from Funding to Reporting” (in the Handbook of International Development 2016).

Lawrence E Strickling is the Executive Director of the Collaborative Governance Project of the Internet Society, whose goal is to expand the knowledge and use of multistakeholder, collaborative processes to solve problems and develop norms. He has served as Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the US Department of Commerce as administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration where he led  government’s engagement with ICANN and directed the US role in transitioning its stewardship of the Domain Name System to the global multistakeholder community.  He also expanded the use of multi-stakeholder convenings as an alternative to regulation/legislation in areas of privacy, cybersecurity and intellectual property.

Mallory Knodel is the Head of Digital for ARTICLE 19. She is the co-chair of the Human Rights and Protocol Considerations research group of the Internet Research Task Force and an advisor to the Freedom Online Coalition. Mallory takes a human rights, people-centred approach to technology implementation and cybersecurity policy advocacy. Originally from the US but living in Nairobi, she has worked with grassroots organisations around the world in Bolivia, France, Palestine and the UK. Mallory has used free software throughout her professional career and considers herself a public interest technologist. She holds a BS in Physics and Mathematics and an MA in Science Education.

Otto Saki is a programme officer at Ford Foundation Office for Southern Africa where he covers a strategic driven portfolio of grantees working with regional mechanisms, business and human rights, women's rights, gender and sexual violence, Africa-China relations and internet freedom in collaboration with the New York team. He has a keen interest in human rights law, health policies, the political economy, information technology, governance, and regional economic communities. Otto has provided technical assistance to civil society, government ministries and government agencies across sub-Saharan Africa in Zimbabwe, Uganda, Botswana, Swaziland, South Sudan and Somalia on various law-related matters including legislative reform. Otto has researched and written on internet governance frameworks in Zimbabwe, commented on various model laws and as well as comparative analysis of Zimbabwe cyber security framework. He chairs the Centre for Applied Legal Research (CALR) that provides technical assistance in law alignment to Zimbabwe’ Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General's Office, in addition to being part of start-up firm of lawyers interested in law and tech, Centre for Technology Law and Development (cTLD). He is a law graduate of the University of Zimbabwe, Columbia University Law School and leadership from Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Teki Akuetteh Falconer is founder and executive director of Africa Digital Rights’ Hub. She set up the Data Protection Commission of Ghana and facilitated implementation of Ghana’s Data Protection Act. She is a senior partner at Nsiah Akuetteh & Co, a law firm based in Accra, Ghana that specialises in information technology and telecommunication law in Africa. She is a privacy and data protection consultant and previously worked for the Government of Ghana in the development of several key legislations for the ICT sector including the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843), Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775) and Electronic Transactions Act, 2012 (Act 772).

Titi holds a Masters in Public Policy and Development with experience across the public and private sectors. She is an expert strategist on information and communications technologies with a focus on the role of government, civil society and the private sector in enabling innovating digital economy. Her experience spans both the public and private sectors consulting for a range of international institutions including AfriNIC, the World Bank Institute, IICD, Mindset, UN-GAID, UNECA, SchoolNet Africa and MTech Communications. She initiated, managed and or led delivery on projects and initiatives for ICT and development, ICT and education, the information society, internet governance, telecom value added products and services within Nigeria, South Africa and across over 30 other nations globally. She has engaged with dynamic policy processes nationally, regionally and internationally.

Verengai Mabika is a leader in technology and social innovation. He joined the Internet Society Global Policy team as senior policy advisor for Africa in 2017.  A serial entrepreneur he founded three organizations, in 2010: Development Reality Institute (DRI), a social innovation hub behind the catalytic http://www.greenvarsity.org/; the Green Innovations Hub now popularised in 32 Africa countries; and in 2014, co-founded Golix, an African blockchain fintech start-up based in Zimbabwe, now with services in Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Cameron, Uganda and South Africa. In 2013 he co-founded the Internet Society Chapter in Zimbabwe, which is now advising government in setting internet policies and standards. An Ashoka Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, and a member of the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Forum, Verengai supports the Internet Society’s global policy work in Africa, including managing partnerships with African Union Commission, Africa Telecommunications Union, Regional Economic Communities (RECs), Regulators Associations and sub-Regional Internet Governance forums. He also leads the ISOC regional policy work related IoT Security, MANRS, internet governance, internet infrastructure security, online privacy and community networks. Verengai is a blockchain enthusiast and has interests in artificial intelligence and IoT.

Wakabi Wairagala has experience in integrating ICT in governance and development work, and has for many years been involved in national, pan-African and international internet governance processes. As Executive Director of the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), he has diverse research interests that lie at the nexus of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and development, citizen participation, innovation, and digital rights. Wakabi holds an MSc and PhD in Informatics from Örebro University (Sweden)and an MA in Journalism and Media Studies from Rhodes University, South Africa.