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International Development Consultant, and ICT for development advocate
Joined on September 16, 2012 – Gambia
Total Post Views: 11,459
| About |
Katim Seringe Touray is an international development consultant based in The Gambia, and has conducted assignments for government and UN agencies, as well as non-governmental organizations in many African countries. He has been an Internet user since the early 1990's, and an advocate for leveraging ICTs, especially the Internet, for development. He is also a free and open source software advocate, is on the Council of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), and was Vice Chair of the FOSSFA Council (2010 - 2012)
Largely self-educated about the Internet and ICT, Dr. Touray has a Ph. D. in Soil Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was a researcher for the Ministry of Agriculture in The Gambia, and Chairman of the board of Directors of the National Agricultural Development Agency (NADA). He also was on the board of Directors of ICANN for three years (2008 – 2011). In addition, he co-founded Ummah Digital, a Gambian startup early in 2012 to apply for the .ummah gTLD in ICANN’s new gTLD program.
In the last month of last year, the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-12) ended in Dubai amid, not hugs and fanfare, but finger-pointing and acrimony. The end, much anticipated as it was, wasn't the finest hour for international cooperation for the global public interest. Looking back, one would be forgiven to conclude that the WCIT-12 was doomed to fail. more»
Last week, the much-anticipated Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Early Warnings on new gTLD applications were finally issued. And the GAC didn't disappoint. A total of 242 warnings were issued on 163 strings (including 31 strings applied for by Radix). The GAC warnings yet again show that Africa is perfectly capable of being at the top of league tables -- for the wrong reasons. more»
ICANN, the private, non-profit, US-based organization is a key player in the global Internet governance ecosystem because it coordinates the Internet's unique identifiers and domain name system. In addition, ICANN develops policies that govern the DNS and addressing system of the Internet. For this reason, and the very model on which the organization's work is based, many countries take participation in ICANN very seriously... To hear ICANN tell it, their work is based on a "bottom-up, consensus-driven, multi-stakeholder model." more»
The announcement last month of a new approach by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to Africa is welcome, and significant for a number of reasons. Africa must participate in ICANN's activities to help shape its policies, and benefit from the domain name industry (estimated at $2 billion in 2008), where it lags behind other regions, given the few African registrars, and that there are no generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) registries that are African. more»
