The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has appointed Paradigm Initiative’s Executive Director, ‘Gbenga Sesan, as a member of his inaugural Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Leadership Panel.
Sesan, a prominent Pan-African digital rights activist, is among ten high-level and eminent persons appointed by the UN boss to influence digital policy globally.
Other appointees are Vint Cerf (United States of America), Hatem Dowidar (Egypt), Lise Fuhr (Denmark), Maria Fernanda Garza (Mexico), and Toomas Hendrik Ilves (Estonia).
Maria Ressa (Philippines and United States of America), Alkesh Kumar Sharma (India), Karoline Edtstadler (Austria), and Lan Xue (China) complete the list of appointees.
Sesan, according to a press statement issued by his organisation, said he was honored by the appointment as he looks forward to serving the world alongside other high-level leaders and also influence digital policy globally.
His organisation, Paradigm Initiative, is a social enterprise that builds ICT-enabled support systems and advocates for digital rights in order to improve the livelihoods of underserved young Africans.
The organisation’s digital inclusion programmes include a digital readiness school for young people living in underserved communities and a software engineering school targeting high potential young Nigerians.
The UN Secretary General, in an announcement made on 16 August, 2022, indicated that the panel has been established as a strategic, empowered and multi-stakeholder body to support and strengthen the Internet Governance Forum.
It is understood that Sesan and other members of the panel will address strategic and urgent issues and highlight forum discussions and possible follow-up actions, in order to promote greater impact and dissemination of IGF discussions.
The IGF is an outcome of the Tunis phase of the World Summit on the Information Society that took place in 2005. In the Tunis Agenda, governments asked the Secretary-General to convene a ‘new forum for policy dialogue’ to discuss issues related to key elements of Internet governance.
The mandate of the forum was extended for another ten years in December 2015, during the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the overall review of the implementation of the World Summit on the Information Society outcomes.
Photo source: Paradigm Initiative
