Ghanaian Represents Africa in Overseeing Internet Name System

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at-large membership has appointed Dr Nii Narku Quaynor of Ghana to represent the African continent's Internet needs to the body responsible for IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management and root server system management functions.

His peers, through an Internet election hosted on election.com, voted Quaynor to the position of "at-large" director. He will join the other 19 directors on the ICANN board, in effect acting as Africa's voice on Internet issues. Quaynor garnered 67 votes at the poles, coming in ahead of Alan Levin (33) and Calvin Browne (30), both of SA.

"Nii has a lot of respect," says Browne, "and that is represented [in the voting results]." Browne notes that the vote was not dependent on nationality, which he sees as a responsible decision by the voters involved, as Quaynor is expected to represent Africa's interests, and not a particular country.

[PQ]In his personal statement on the ICANN site, Quaynor says: "The deep involvement of Africa, as the newest of the emerging Internet communities, is critical for the success of the ICANN process in order to avoid further digital divide. I am committed to working for its development and will ensure Africa's participation by building in-region grassroots institutions that mobilise Africans to participate in ICANN."

"We would seek support for the needs of the underprivileged of the Internet and favour formulating an agile balance of private, civil and public interests," continues Quaynor.

He holds a BA in engineering science from Dartmouth College, a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Thayer School of Engineering, and MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the State University of New York at StonyBrook.

Africa had the smallest number of votes of any region in the world for its representative, tallying a meagre 130 votes, compared to 17 745 for Asia/Australia/Pacific, 11 309 for Europe, 1 402 for Latin America/Caribbean, and 3 449 for North America.

The ICANN board composes nine at-large directors, nine selected by ICANN's three supporting organisations, and the president/CEO.

Quaynor was not available for comment at time of publication.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first open balloting of board members to the non-profit group overseeing the Internet's name and address system led on Tuesday to the election of five regional directors, including a German hacker.

The five new grass-roots members, each representing a major region of the globe, will be a part of a 19-member board elected to run the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group charged with overseeing the technical functions of the global Internet.

Marina del Rey, California-based ICANN is the nonprofit corporation formed to assume responsibility for Web address domain name allocation, network management and other technical issues, initially performed under U.S. government contract.

ICANN is responsible to the more than 300 million people estimated to be connected to the Internet worldwide.

The organization's grass-roots membership of 76,000 Internet users were invited to participate in at-large balloting to select five of ICANN's 19-member board. Each of the world's five regions had the chance to elect one board member each.

Nii Narku Quaynor of Ghana, who works for Network Computer Systems, was elected to represent Africa.

``The deep involvement of Africa, as the newest of the emerging Internet communities, is critical for the success of the ICANN process in order to avoid further digital divide,'' Quaynor said in his personal statement.

The European winner was Andy Mueller-Maguhn, a spokesman of the Chaos Computer Club, a well-known German computer activist group (https://www.ccc.de). Chaos boasts 1,600 loose-knit members and that has claimed credit for several famous government computer break-ins.

In his candidate's profile, Mueller-Maguhn said he is ''trying to support understanding of the global cultural room Internet, gift economy, new media, (and) ideas for a democratic information society''.

Mueller-Maguhn, a student at the Free University of Berlin, said he viewed ICANN and the architecture of the Internet as a public issue that ``might have an increasing effect on how society is able to share its know-how and develop accordingly. So the idea must be to make the things at ICANN transparent and the decisions future-compatible.''

Cisco Systems executive Karl Auerbach was elected as the grass-roots member from North America. In his candidate's profile, Auerbach said he had been involved with the Internet ''since 1973 -- before there were web browsers, a Domain Name System, TCP/IP, or even IP addresses.''

Masanobu Katoh, a Japanese citizen who lives in the United States and works for Fujitsu Limited, was elected to represent the Asia/Pacific region.

Ivan Moura Campos, a Brazilian citizen and chief executive officer of Akwan Information Technologies, was elected to represent the Latin American and Caribbean region. Campos currently serves as chairman of Brazil's Internet Steering Committee.

ICANN's board is a hybrid of the Internet's various constituencies, known as ``stakeholders.'' Half of its members have already been chosen by ``supporting organizations'' that represent Internet service providers and networking engineers.

The ``at-large'' board members were drawn from all ``netizens'' older than 16 with a verifiable e-mail and physical address who had bothered to sign up as ICANN members.