The Africa Internet Summit 2017 (AIS’17) will be held in Nairobi, Kenya from 21 May – 2 June co-organised by AFRINIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Africa, AfNOG, the African Network Operators’ Group and the Af* organisations.
This fifth edition of the AIS is proudly hosted by TESPOK under the high patronage of the Ministry of ICT in Kenya.
The Internet has changed the world for the better particularly in Africa where communities have seized the power of the Internet and are using it to improve lives from the remotest corners of our continent to the tower blocks of our high-tech cities.
Every year in June, hundreds of key players in the African and global Internet industry gather at one of Africa’s pinnacle ICT events, the Africa Internet Summit (AIS), to discuss Internet policy development, Internet technologies and infrastructure and access issues, as well as the unique successes and challenges of operating and maintaining the Internet in Africa and beyond.
Internet Penetration
With an Internet penetration rate of 66% and an impressive 88% mobile penetration rate, Kenya is one of Africa’s leaders in terms of Internet access.
In 2016, the number of Kenya’s Internet users grew to around 37 million, mainly due to the expansion in mobile services.
The upsurge in the mobile data/Internet was driven by provision of affordable Internet bundles offered by the various service providers as a result of fair competition in the data market.
The huge growth of e-commerce services and social networking on mobile devices has also pushed the demand for mobile Internet/data usage. Online banking is hugely popular in Kenya too, with mobile money transactions hitting around 30 million transactions per quarter. .KE, the country’s top-level domain (TLD), also records significant increases in domain name registrations monthly, indicating that more and more businesses, institutions and entrepreneurs are getting online.
Learn. Contribute. Participate
The theme of the AIS’17 is “Beyond Connectivity: Internetworking for African Development” and the event aims to facilitate knowledge-share as well as to promote capacity building and participation in Internet policy development throughout the African region.
At the Summit, participants can join in discussions, workshops, panels and tutorials on Internet number resource policy development, Internet security, IPv4 exhaustion, IPv6 deployment, ICT business issues, ICT for development, women in tech, mobile networking, Internet research, local content provision, IXPs and access provision – among many others.
Technical training workshops, led by globally renowned experts will take place from 21 May – 28 May.
General plenary sessions, Internet policy development discussions and the AFRINIC-26 Meeting will take place from 29 May – 2 June 2017. Register now to secure your place: www.internetsummitafrica.org/ or contact us at <comms@afrinic.net> for more details.
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