Meeting Summary 01 April 2009

During this AFRALO teleconference, there was continual technical nuisance due to statics. Some members were requested to switch off their mobile phones and call back later on, others to mute themselves by pressing on ‘6’ for ‘mute’ and ‘7’ for ‘unmute’. Members should mute themselves to avoid troubling the progress of teleconferences when they realize the problem comes from them. If such members want to intervene in the discussions, then they have to unmute themselves when speaking.
2. Review of the Summary Items of 03 March 2009
A slight correction concerning the ‘capacity building-up’ project: The group had to gather concepts and not to write up a program
3. Review of the Action Items of 03 March 2009
1. Self-evaluation by ALSes (Hawa)
In the March meeting, ALS were requested, for this teleconference, to sum up their participation and express their needs and prerequisites regarding how to improve their future participation
To date, only 5 of the 31 AFRALO ALS have sent the information to H Diakite.
The remaining ALSes have until 10 April to send their report to H Diakite.
2. Draft AFRALO By-Laws (Khaled)
The English text of the draft by-laws and Tijani BEN JEMAA’s comments are at:
draft afralo bylaws for comments
French text at:
afralo icann draft bylaws french
F Seye Sylla suggested having an intermediary draft with the comments of the all the members incorporated to it and to submit this new version to the AFRALO for further discussion.
The already proposed amendments were discussed, in particular thefinancial clause for membership fees.Yaovi and Mohamed argued that membership rights could mean a serious put-off for new candidates who may not have much financial resources.
H Ullrich reminded that the ICANN by-laws don’t allow RALO’s to charge membership fees. AFRALO members can comment the ICANN FY10 budget proposal that is open to public consultation right now but The future AFRALO by-laws must respect the ICANN by-laws and MoU.
*http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-17feb09-en.htm*
AFRALO members can add their own comments on the draft AFRALO by-laws in English or in French by clicking on the ‘comment’ box at the bottom of the respective Wiki page(see links above). Deadline is 10 April
H Ullrich asked everybody to focus on the final objective when making their comments and read the MoU and the ICANN-bylaws first. She will send them, in both languages through the AFRALO discussion list and will highlight the relevant provisions regarding financing
3. Capacity Building (Michel)
H Diakite said there should be some briefing at the beginning of each AFRALO meeting to compensate for the fact that many members did not have sufficient time to read the voluminous information on ICANN politics before the meetings and specific conference calls destined to inform the members with a summary on the politics would also be useful. F Seye Sylla suggested having sessions about the issues that interest AFRALO specifically.
H Ullrich proposed 20 minutes briefings. These briefings would serve as small summaries and would be animated by either the ICANN staff or regional leaders (i.e. W Ludwig, E Leibovitch or others – or an ALAC member, i.e. Cheryl Langdon-Orr)
AFRALO agreed on the idea of short 10 minutes briefing with questions and answers at the beginning of each teleconferences. This should be added to the draft concepts on capacity building. The AFRALO members must suggest the issues through the AFRICAN discussion list.
*Michel and his WG*have one week to come up with some result and gathers a list of briefing subjects of interest to AFRALO otherwise Gabriel will take the lead of the WG.
Other formats will apply to deal with issues that require more than 10 minute disucssions. H Ullrich said that specific AFRALO guides could be written
4. Recent Activities of ALAC
New gTLD Draft Applicant Guidebook, Version 2–
The ICANN public consultation ends on 13 avril 2009