Mawaki Chango

DigiLexis Consulting

Mawaki is a scholar as well as a consultant and an entrepreneur in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). He is particularly enthusiastic about assisting African countries build the fundamentals for a truly digital economy through inclusive and evidence-based ICT-enabling policies. He has nearly 20 years of experience on societal issues relating to ICTs, consulting for organizations including UNESCO, the International Development Research Center, the Open Society Foundations, the African Union’s NEPAD Agency, UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, Hivos, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), etc. Mawaki earned a PhD in Information Science and Technology from Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York) with a research focus on Internet governance, policy and digital identity management. He is a founding member of the Board of Trustees at Sovrin Foundation which has been set up to govern a global public utility for decentralized identity provided via Sovrin Network, and is dedicated to building a trustworthy identity layer to the Internet protocols. Over the last dozen of years, Mawaki has been actively involved in internet governance spaces such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), particularly as a Policy Councillor in matters the Internet’s generic top-level domain names; the global civil society’s Internet Governance Caucus; and the UN-led process, Internet Governance Forum, both at global level and on various levels in Africa. Founder of DigiLexis Consulting, Dr. Chango intends to increasingly engage his thoughts and actions to help spur Internet-enabled entrepreneurial opportunities in Africa as well as governments to embrace the most adequate policies in that regard while improving their own operations in the digital age. Currently residing in Togo where he lectures at Kara University, Mawaki speaks English, French and Portuguese.