Ghana IGF 2016: 18 August 2016

Closing Remarks by Mr. Chengetai Masango, United Nations Secretariat of the

Internet Governance Forum

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Ladies and gentlemen,

On behalf of the United Nations Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum, allow me

to congratulate you on successfully organizing the national Internet Governance Forum

of Ghana, and to thank you for inviting me to participate.

As you know, the IGF is a multistakeholder platform for gathering all interested

stakeholder groups in one place to discuss the issues pertaining to the Internet. With,

last year, the General Assembly extending the mandate of the IGF for another 10 years,

we were given the responsibility all together, to improve our work and make changes

on Internet Governance field.

On this ours journey, the existence and rapid growth of national and regional IGF

initiatives, is critical. The Ghana IGF network, along with another 65 teams of colleagues

from national and regional IGFs across the world, are helping us to encompass all

national and regional differences into one global IGF agenda. The work that you are

doing, by following the IGF main principles of being open, inclusive, multistakeholder

and non-commercial, combined with your dedication and commitment, is what is

already making a positive change within your respective community, thus within the

global IGF as well.

As you all probably now, this year’s IGF will be hosted by the Government of Mexico, in

Guadalajara from 6-9 December. We are hoping to have many of you present there,

onsite or if not possible, I am inviting you to use all the benefits of Internet and to take

active participation through online tools we will provide.

The IGF is now focused on the preparations for this annual meeting, with many ongoing

intersessional work activities. While I will not take time here to describe all of them, I

will reference some that I know are particularly relevant to this region: Connecting and

Enabling the Next Billion: Phase II, that is focused on detecting the related issues locally,

and proposing the best solutions; as well as Best Practice Forums on different subjects:

gender and access, IXPs, IPv6, Cybersecurity and Anti-corruption Online. We hope that

you will join in contributing to this work, from your perspective, and help in building

fully comprehensive content to be presented and discussed in Guadalajara.

Dear Colleagues,

It was a pleasure to be able to listen to many important sessions today and our

compliments for this. Thank you for your excellent work and please continue like this in

the years ahead.

The IGF Secretariat is at your disposal for any assistance needed.

Chengetai Masango,

United Nations Secretariat of the Internet Governance Forum