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Submission to the IGF Community Public Consultation, January 2019 About APC The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) is an international network and non-profit organisation founded in 1990 that works to help ensure everyone has affordable access to a free and open internet to improve lives, realise human rights and create a more just world. APC has 87 members (made up of 58 organisations and 29 individuals), many of whom participate actively in the IGF process. APC itself has been...
On 11 January, while researching the current wave of internet shutdowns in Africa, we contacted our Harare-based colleague Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha, coordinator of the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms project, to get his insights. He responded three days later: "Sorry for the delay, I was experiencing outages myself. Zimbabwe is on shutdown." Throughout the African continent, where many APC members and partners are based, recent weeks have seen a fresh spate of internet sh...
For the sixth edition of our spectrum series, we are sharing the story of Adriana Labardini Inzunza's journey to the remote community of Santiago Nuyoó, Oaxaca, with Mexico's under-minister of information and communication technology (ICT), Salma Jalife, Rhizomatica's Peter Bloom, and Elisa Castillo of Telecomunicaciones Indígenas Comunitarias A.C. Adri...
This report by APC member Media Matters for Democracy can also be found on the Digital Rights Monitor website. The idea of growing women’s leadership is more radical than it should be. Women do constitute almost half of the world’s population after all – they contribute endlessly to the workforce, often in unpaid, unappreciated categories. Talking specifically of countries like Pakis...
Welcome to the 12th round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. 1. Calls for grants The GSMA launched a new Innovation Fund for Rural Connectivity, aimed at expanding digital inclusion through innovative new technology solutions for connecting unserved rural communities in Uganda and Ghana. Read more. The European Commission (EC) has announced that the date and ...
We are republishing this article on APC.org as part of a partnership with Rising Voices, an initiative of Global Voices that aims to help bring new voices from new communities and speaking endangered or indigenous languages to the global conversation. You can also read the original post on RV's website. A crowdsourced, community-based platform is pioneering th...
For the second interview in our spectrum series, we had the chance to speak with Peter Bloom, general coordinator and founder of Mexico-based NGO and APC member organisation, Rhizomatica. Peter established Rhizomatica in 2009 with the mission of increasing telecommunications access by helping communities to build, own and manage their own low-cost, open source communications infrastructu...
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) welcomes the initiative by the IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) to further develop the IGF’s intersessional work on “Policy Options for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion(s)”. We appreciate the opportunity to share our perspectives on some of the key aspects oriented to building an enabling environment for acces...
There is a profound connectivity “gap” in many parts of the world, leaving over half the global population without internet access – 3.58 billion people currently have internet access, out of a total of 7.7 billion. This connectivity gap exists in urban, rural and remote unserved and underserved areas of many countries, particularly developing and least-developed countries. One very criti...
This year’s Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) focuses on community networks. Community networks are “communication networks built, owned, operated, and used by citizens in a participatory and open manner.” This is a starting point. As the 43 country reports gathered here show, in practice, “community networks” can be hybrid systems, with different political and practical obj...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2018
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