Since the inception of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the Council of Europe, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) have been working on a joint initiative on public participation in internet governance. The three entities have held joint workshops around this theme at both the Rio de Janeiro (2007) and Hyderabad (2008) meetings of the Internet Governance (IGF), and a "discussion paper (paper 1)" was presented.

APC and KICTANet draw on the experience of their successes in the Africa ICT Policy Monitor project and the CATIA project to bring an integrated approach to ICT policy research, dissemination and advocacy through the building of sub-regional networks. They operate using the principle of multi-stakeholder partnerships developed through the CATIA experience to engage in evidence-based policy change. The project seeks to identify the political obstacles to extending affordable access to ICT infrastructure in Africa and to advocate for their removal in order to create a sound platform for sub-regional connectivity in East, West and Central Africa that will provide a platform for the effective use of ICTs in development processes.

CILAC seek to integrate research, research communications, network-building and advocacy to make internet broadband universal and affordable. It’s a one year project that started on February 2008.

Oriented to influence national and regional ICT policy processes to ensure that demands and perspectives of civil society organisations are considered.

Oriented to develop and strengthen capacities in civil society organisations to effectively engage and influence global, regional and national ICT policy processes .

Oriented to learn, understand, discuss and analyse about the impact of ICT policy decisions on civil society as well as to offer inputs to inform advocacy in Latin America at regional and national levels.

Available since 2001, the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) ICT Policy Monitor website gathers essential news and documentation about policies relating to information and communication technologies (ICTs). Through the website, the only one of its kind across Latin America and the Caribbean, APC aims to demystify internet policies and regulations.

What is “harmful content” on the internet? The definition is contestable, subjective and open to a range of interpretations, and the majority of interventions to combat it are mostly concerned with obscenity and child pornography. Sexual rights workers are troubled by the growing role of conservative forces – supported by religious extremists – and their attempts to encourage new legislation that would treat all online sexual exchanges as sexual predation and all adult content on the internet as pornography. This protectionist approach overshadows other important aspects of the internet that directly impact on internet users’ lives and their ability to access to vital information on sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights. EroTICs, an exploratory research just starting at APC, aims to narrow the gap between political assumptions and a better understanding of content and “harm” based on women’s real experience of sexuality online.

GEM is an evaluation methodology that integrates a gender analysis into evaluations of initiatives that use information and communication technologies (ICTs) for social change. GEM provides a means for determining whether ICTs are worsening or really improving women’s lives and gender relations, as well as for promoting positive change at the individual, institutional, community and broader social levels.

GenderIT.org is a website for women’s movements, ICT advocates and policy makers who want to ensure that ICT policy meets women’s needs and does not infringe on their rights.

The global civil society community and other stakeholders have expressed their commitment to play their role as Global Information Society watchdog.

The Internet Governance Forum is a multi-stakeholder policy dialogue space convened by the United Nations Secretary General in 2006 to “foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the internet”. APC has found that the IGF is an experimental and influential policy forum for achieving our mission of ensuring open, universal and afforable access to the internet for all people.

Marginalised women, teenage girls and women in armed conflict in more than ten countries will be the people most likely to benefit in a project launched in January 2009 by the APC women’s programme to tackle what the UN has called a “global epidemic of violence against women”.

This two-year research project examines the nature and extent of media piracy and the effect of anti-piracy legislative and enforcement frameworks on access to knowledge in South Africa. The research was carried out by researchers from APC and several South African universities, and forms part of a larger study by researchers in Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Hungary, on media piracy in their countries.

In Africa, APC’s main focus is on access to infrastructure. Africa currently has to pay for some of the most expensive bandwidth in the world and the hard currency paid leaves the continent. Because East Africa does not have international fibre connections it is paying even more than West African countries connected to the monopoly-controlled SAT3/WASC cable.

APC’s FibreForAfrica.net site provides basic information about international bandwidth in Africa, its costs and the existence of monopoly access to it. It focuses especially on the proposed East African cable projects and the ending of the monopoly of SAT-3.

In order to reduce poverty and foster inclusive development through affordable access to the internet, APC is working on a resource kit for realising a universal access agenda, present promising options, experiences, lessons and opportunities in pro-poor access provision in developing societies.

APC is currently building a coalition of civil society organisations and businesses to campaign for the lowering of costs associated with the internet in South Africa. The project being carried out with the support of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) will mobilise a number internet service providers (ISPs), communications workers, content providers, academics, alternative energy experts, a number of civil society organisations and private sector associations to advocate for affordable broadband access for all South Africans.

APC has been commissioned by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) to investigate the potential for the use of ICTs for advancing democracy. The study is intended to look beyond the simple “use” of ICTs (mainly internet and mobile phones) for democracy and are digging deeper to find out how ICTs permeate the different levels of society. Among others, the study assesses how civil societies and citizen-based initiatives participate in the democracy process, and the potential ICTs have to promote democracy in terms of outreach and advocacy.