Final Report on Africa ICT Policy Advocacy Training Workshop

"The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) held a five-day ICTpolicy advocacy workshop from July 19-23 2004 in Nairobi, Kenya. Theworkshop was supported by DFID's Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA)programme and the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

The workshop brought together 41 participants from the private sector,government, civil society and the media. Representatives came from Ethiopia,Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia andZimbabwe.

The workshop sought to build on and improve the capacity of participants todrive local ICT policy advocacy activities that could impact on ICT policyand regulatory environments. The eventual goal is to initiate a process ofworking with local animators to draft national advocacy plans forimplementation in their respective countries. This will be followed by aseries of advocacy events and interventions."

Main Objectives of the Workshop:

• Deepen the understanding of ICT policy issues among the potential national policy advocacy animators;
• Equip participants to identify crucial ICT policy issues and to engage stakeholders in advocacy activities at national level and to seek and interrogate some of the complexities of ICT policy processes;
• Equip participants to advocate on specific ICT policy issues;
• Enable participants to understand the roles and perspectives of three primary stakeholder groups we will work with: media, private sector and civil society organisations;
• Encourage women and women's groups to participate in the project and to enable all participants to understand how gender issues relate to ICT policies; and
• Provide the project teams with insight into the policy issues and advocacy needs of civil society, media and private sector actors in each of the countries represented.

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