Legacy Achiever - 2009

	Full Name:	Mr. A. A. Akplogan
	Award Year	2009
	Position:	CEO, AfriNIC
	Location	Mauritius
	Contact	*****@afrinic.net

The African Network Operators Group (AfNOG) has awarded Internet engineer Adiel A. Akplogan the first Network Information Infrastructure (NI&I) Service Award for 2009 for his contribution in establishing the very successful African Internet Numbers Registry, AfriNIC, and for his leadership and service to the African technical community. AfNOG presented the Award during its 10th anniversary meeting held in Cairo, Egypt.

"Adiel Akplogan has selflessly worked to establish AfriNIC and worked tirelessly to grow the membership, improve use of number resources and built an active technical community in Africa. This has resulted in the growth of a more robust Internet in Africa and developed an active technical community of LIRs developing policies appropriate for the region. This has enabled development of numerous applications throughout Africa impacting education, health and commerce in a notable way" said Nii Quaynor, Convener of AfNOG whom the Award is named after. Nii himself received the Internet Society's prestigious Jonathan Postel Award in 2007.

Adiel continues to provide leadership in the numbers registry community and has been a strong African voice in several global technical fora. Adiel A. Akplogan is the Chief Executive Officer of AfriNIC Ltd., the Internet Numbers' Resource Registry for Africa since 2004. With more than 15 years experience in the Internet Technology environment, he has previously worked as New Technology Director at CAFENet (an IT service company based in Togo - 1994-2000), then as IT Director of Symbol Technologies in France (2001-2003). He has served as member of the UN Secretary General Internet Governance Forum Advisors Group since (2006-2009), and the OIF (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie) group of Expert on Internet Governance since 1999. He has served in the African Technical Advisory Committee of the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (ATAC/UNECA) from 2005-2006. Mr. Akplogan is current Chair of the NRO Executive Council (Number Resource Organization - www.nro.net) and was involved with the setting up of several technical coordination bodies in Africa such as the African Network Operators Group (AfNOG) where he serves as a member of the Administrative committee and the African ccTLD Managers Association (AfTLD). Adiel is an Electrical Engineer and holds a M.Sc. in E-Business and New Technology Management.

 

 

Mark Tinka Winner of the 2009 Network Information & Infrastructure (NI&I) Young Professional Award

Mark has been in the Internet industry since 1999, having helped build various Internet Exchange Points (IXP's) in Uganda, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Malawi. He was also instrumental in shaping the technological advancements and construction of the service networks of Africa Online, a Pan-African Internet Service Provider with eight operations on the continent, when he worked there.

In addition to the APRICOT, Mark is also an instructor with the AfNOG (Africa Network Operators' Group), an annual event held every year in an African country that pools industry peers together to share knowledge and advances in Internet communications.

Mark is now based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he is Chief Network Architect of Global Transit Communications and TIME dotCom, a leading regional IP Transit provider and the leading national fibre-based backbone telecommunications provider, respectively.

Mark is a huge proponent of IPv6 and helped start Zimbabwe's first commercial IPv6 network (Africa Online Zimbabwe), and has done the same with the organizations he represents in Malaysia.