On 14th October 2022, The African Network Information Centre (AFRINIC) hosted Hon. Ousman Bah, Minister of Communications and Digital Economy in the Republic of Gambia. The Gambian delegation accompanying the minister included Mr. Ebrima Darbo, the Deputy Permanent Secretary, Mr. Lang Loum, the Deputy Director of ICT, Mr. Sering Modou Bah, the Principal ICT Officer, and Mr. Assan Jammeh the Senior Planner. The ministerial delegation was received by Mr. Eddy Kayihura, the Chief Executive Officer, AFRINIC.
Mr. Kayihura, showed the Honorable minister around the office, introducing him to the staff. Mr. James Chirwa, AFRINIC Head of Member Services, delivered a presentation on AFRINIC showcasing the state of resource membership in Gambia and provided inputs on how the Ministry can partner with AFRINIC to champion AFRINIC services (IPv6, IRR, and RPKI) adoption in Gambia.
After the presentation, the two principles had deliberations on IPv6 deployment in Gambia, and how the two organizations can collaborate. “I want to assure you IPv6 deployment in Gambia come January 2023”, said, Honorable Bah.
On his part, Mr. Kayihura committed to providing support towards IPv6 deployment in the Gambia. Mr. Kayihura said, “We want to support Gambia to achieve its digital transformation objectives and one of the ways we will do this is by supporting your IPv6 adoption. We will ensure your engineers are trained and walk them through IPv6 deployment and I am glad that come January 2023, this will be achieved”. The Chief Executive Officer expressed his appreciation to Hon. Bah for this visit.
Another angle of discussion was the low number of resource members in Gambia. According to AFRINIC statistics, Gambia has 10 Resource members (See Statistics of this country below). The Minister assured Mr. Kayihura that he would see to more resource membership from his domicile which is in line with the Ministry’s mission of promoting the development of robust, scalable, reliable, affordable, and accessible modern information. The Minister expressed the urgency for this initiative and promised to meet with the Gambian Internet stakeholders in the coming week to discuss the way forward.
Figure 1
Figure 2
The statistics above reveal a low count of AFRINIC members and low IPv6 from Gambia.
The statistics are available on the following links