West Africa Internet Resilience Workshop

The West Africa Internet Resilience Workshop at the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF2026) is designed to help local Internet communities identify gaps in current data needed to enhance connectivity, reliability, and affordability. This workshop will bring together academics, industry experts, network operators, and decision-makers to share knowledge, discuss best practices, foster collaboration, and develop several research proposals that can be implemented by local and international research partners. 

Agenda

Day 1: Identifying A Research Question

8:30 Registration and coffee

9:00 Welcome and Outline

9:30 Understanding the Internet Ecosystem in West Africa and how Participants Connect

In this session, we will discuss the critical components of the Internet and how they correspond to make the Internet resilient.

10:45 Coffee

11:15 What challenges does the Internet face in West Africa

In this session, we will get participants to work in small groups to list the current challenges to the Internet that they perceive. We will then get them to report back to the class and group the challenges into themes. 

For the second part of this session, we will assign one theme to each group and ask them to conduct a quick desktop review to quantify it.

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Introduction to the Internet Measurement Landscape

In this session, we will provide an overview of what it means to measure the Internet and introduce tools, including Internet Society Pulse, that help participants more effectively validate their challenges from the previous session.

15:30 Coffee

16:00 Identifying a Research Question

In the final session, we will get the groups to consider the gaps in the data that currently hinder them from quantifying their thematic challenge. This will help them identify the research problem, which they will work on developing a proposal on Day 2.

17:00 Close

Day 2: Developing a Proposal

9:00 Recap and discuss research questions

Review what we discussed on Day 1 and have the groups present their research questions.

10:00 Learning from successes

In this session, we will get participants to list recent successes in developing Internet resilience in West Africa and identify what we can learn from them to help with answering our own challenges.

10:45 Coffee

11:15 Developing a research proposal

In this session, the 5 groups will continue working on their research proposals, including resources, methodology, project timelines, and identifying obstacles.

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Telling the story

In this session, we will discuss how to use research data for advocacy and the need to develop context and narrative to make it relevant for the audience.

The groups will then work on their pitch, which they will present in the final session.

15:00 Coffee

15:30 Presenting the proposals

In the final session, the groups will present their proposals to the class for peer review and feedback, preparing them for the presentation during DRIF 2026.

17:00 Close