Benjamin Akinmoyeje - Candidate Statement

[Benjamin Akinmoyeje]

Dear NCSG members,

Kindly see below my Candidates statement


Name: Benjamin Akinmoyeje

Declared region of residence: Africa

Gender: Male

Employment: Ph.D. Research Candidate

Any conflicts of interest: None

Questions:

I accepted the nomination to serve as NCSG chair because there are avenues
to improve membership engagements and NCSG outreach activities and increase
our global footprints and visibility. We urgently need to build our
member's capacity to participate in the policy processes and reduce
volunteer fatigue in our community. I am qualified to facilitate onboarding
more members to participate actively in our policy development processes. I
am eager to serve the community as the NCSG chair.

Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and
affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the
relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCSG
Chair , and identify any conflicts of interests you might have.

I am a Ph.D. student of Informatics at the Faculty of Computing and
Informatics, Namibia University of Science and Technology, conducting
academic research in the area of excessive social media use among young
adults and social media platform governance. I am part of the Human Rights
Cross Community Working Party, an Article 19 Internet of Rights Fellow
(fellowship focus was ensuring active participation of civil society in the
ICANN multistakeholder governance process).

I have over ten years of experience as a public health digital health
expert working in Nigeria, supporting people living with HIV/AIDS, orphans,
and vulnerable children and women in resource-constrained settings. I have
the privilege of working with international nonprofit organizations to
implement life-saving donor-funded projects in Nigeria, South Africa, and
Africa.

I joined NCUC and NCSG in 2013 during an NCUC outreach as a fresh graduate
from the inaugural African School of Internet Governance, and I have been a
committed member since then. I am an ICANN fellow alumnus and a member of
the African multi-stakeholder. I was an NCUC Africa EC. I am a member of
ISOC Nigeria and Namibia Chapters.

I am currently the NCUC chair. As NCUC chair, I facilitated NCUC members’
calls more regularly; in collaboration with NCUC ECs, we established the
NCUC Issue Forum to amplify NCUC’s voices on policy issues to the ICANN
community. I also restored funding for the constituency from PIR for NCUC
activities, introduced and recruited new leaders to NCUC, and ensured every
region’s representation in NCUC leadership. I led the NCUC EC team to
redesign the NCUC website; I secured alternative travel funding for NCUC
members to multiple ICANN meetings.

The past three years have seen positive engagements. I have managed to
improve NCUC engagements in ICANN post-COVID-19. I also engaged the NCSG
e-Team member. There were multiple productions and translations of the NCUC
brochure for a wider audience. The NCUC leadership team improved the NCUC
outreach, leading to increased membership recruitment.

The NCSG Chair  performs several functional responsibilities for the
Constituency. What level of time commitment can you bring to your NCSG
Chair  role on a weekly and overall basis? Describe any concerns or
limitations on your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive
Committee and ICANN Meetings in person.


As a research student, I have the privilege of participating actively in
the ICANN process for up to 10 hours weekly to attend ICANN online
meetings. I did show my availability and commitment to the constituency as
an NCUC Chair; I was always available for the monthly NCUC EC meetings, and
I was also available for all the NCUC engagements and interactions during
ICANN public and policy fora.


Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep members
apprised of your NCSG Chair -related activities?


As the NCSG Chair, I will continue to strengthen the usual communication
channel and our NCSG mailing list and coordinate with our constituencies to
engage our membership.

I will support our NCSG e-Team in engaging more with our members through
our social media channels (Twitter) and showcasing our activities during
and after ICANN meetings.

I plan to engage a volunteer strategic communication team to coordinate the
proper messaging of NCSG for helpful member orientation. I will continue
democratizing NSCG information and communication materials to more diverse
groups by collaborating with ICANN staff/ support to interpret the NCSG
brochure in more local languages as I have done in NCUC.

With eager members' help, enhance the NCSG wiki content for a more diverse
audience.

In collaboration with the NCSG, EC facilitates regular NCSG membership
meetings beyond NCSG policy meetings to include membership in participation.

I will first inspire more interaction between the GNSO councilors and the
membership, creating routine NCSG post-ICANN meeting readout sessions in
collaboration with the constituencies. Secondly, routine NCSG town hall
meetings would be motivated to improve interactions and support for our
councilors.

In collaboration with the NCSG ECs, I will facilitate regular meetings of
the NCSG Executive Committee - in these meetings, we hope to prioritize the
needs of our group.


How do you foresee NCSG ’s function, scale, or role changing in the future?
What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why? Incumbent
candidates should answer in a manner that is both backward and
forward-looking, i.e. taking note of their contributions and work in the
previous year.

It is important to note that the GNSO councilors take the lead in the
policy direction of the NCSG, and I, as the chair, ensure proper
coordination with the members to advocate for their positions.However, in
the fast-moving Internet age, Artificial Intelligence, dynamic ICANN
multistakeholder community processes, and other Internet governance
processes, NCSG must be active, waiting for different stakeholders to set
an agenda on policy development processes.

NCSG, as the representatives of the noncommercial community, must be
innovative and proactive in protecting the rights of civil societies,
academia, human rights activists, and under-represented communities in the
ICANN DNS policies development process.

We must be agile in understanding the trends in the age of multiple
Internet governance processes that challenge the ICANN multistakeholder
approach to Internet governance.

NCSG must enhance civil society representation in multistakeholder
engagement, not just through the robust participation of a few strong
members but also by amplifying the voices of many diverse members.

The immediate policies required for the NCSG active engagement is to ensure
that DNS Abuse is adequately defined and not used as an instrument to get
ICANN into content moderation or access to registrant private data, domain
name registrants, and human rights are protected. Review of the Draft
Registry Service Provider (RSP) Handbook-New gTLD Program, Policy Status
Report: GNSO Policy & Implementation Working Group Recommendations, Phase 2
Initial Report of the EPDP on Internationalized Domain Names, and Public
Interest Commitments (PICs) and Registry Voluntary Commitments (RVCs).

Yours Sincerely,
Benjamin Akinmoyeje
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