A public consultation on Namibia’s national assessment of the Internet Universality Indicators (IUI) commenced in the capital on Tuesday.

Addressing the meeting, Executive Director in the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT), Audrin Mathe said Namibia is the first Southern African country to carry out a National Assessment on IUI, providing the country with an opportunity to voluntarily assess itself as a country in terms of how the internet policies and development look like practically.

“This assessment will provide us with evidence of where we are precisely in our policy and development of the internet, particularly considering the human rights aspects, openness, and accessibility. It further evaluates the roles and governance of the multi-stakeholder, the intersection of gender, people with disabilities, youth, sustainable development, and other intersectional issues that ought to be paid attention to in the policies and practices of technology,” Mathe said.

Furthermore, by evaluating Namibia's internet environment against the Rights, Openness, Accessible, Multi-stakeholder (ROAM)-X indicators, Namibia is confident that this process will present a comprehensive and substantive understanding of the national internet environment and policies.

The process will also assess Namibia's policies' alignment to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) ROAM principles and their contribution to sustainable development; and develop policy recommendations and practical initiatives that will enable Namibia to improve its internet ecosystem, particularly as frontier ICTs evolve, he said.

Moreover, the ministry applauded the implementing partner, UNESCO's ROAM, for ensuring deeper consultations with stakeholders to inform the national position of this assessment.

To date, the ministry is told that deeper consultations have taken place with the human rights, media and freedom of expression cluster and more inputs are supported and provided by multi-stakeholder advisory board, and one-on-one and sector interviews have been taking place as part of the research, he added.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency