Yaovi Atohoun

Yaovi Atohoun has more than 15 years work experience in Information and Communication technology. He is an electrical engineer and has also attended many training program on Telecommunication and Internet infrastructures. His professional career started in Lome (Togo) by setting up and managing a local area network in the National News Agency from 1991 to 1992. From 1992 to 1997, he traveled to more than 12 countries in West Africa for the West African News Agency Development project (WANAD/UNESCO) to computerize the National News Agencies. During the same period he conducted many training sessions on how to use computer, communication devices and the Internet in Benin and other African countries.

Yaovi Atohoun was the USAID/Leland Initiative Coordinator in Benin where he worked with RTI (www.rti.org) and Computer-Frontiers (www.computer-frontiers.org) from 1997 to 2004. He also worked with the AED (www.aed.org) Community Learning Centre Project in Ghana and the ADEA/EDDI education connectivity project. He traveled to Chad, Rwanda and many West African countries to conduct training sessions, technical equipment installation and policy discussions related to Information Technology for the Leland Initiative. He is part of a team that assisted ECOWAS countries in setting up the West African Telecommunication Regulators Association (www.watra.org). In May 2004, he was in the Mano River Union countries for an assessment on ICT development among the NGOs working on conflict prevention and mitigation.

As a consultant, he has also worked for many projects involving the use of Information and Communication Technology. These projects include the Democratic Decentralization Dialogue (www.ddialogue.org), the Central Region Network in Ghana, the African Executive Network (http://execnet.rti.org) and the African Juridical network (http://ajn.rti.org). He worked twice as an advisory committee member for a project on E-Governance for CDT (Center for Democracy and Technology).

Yaovi Atohoun worked in a team for the official recognition of the local ISOC chapter (ISOC-Benin) in 1999. He is acting as the secretary General of ISOC-Benin. He participated in the Internet Society annual events (INET) in Geneva (1998), San Jose (1999), Yokohama (2000) and Sweden (2001). In 2002 Yaovi Atohoun was part of the African delegates in the ISOC-Francophonie meeting in Canada.

Yaovi Atohoun has been a choirmaster and brass band teacher for many years

Affiliations: IT Consultant

Location: cotonou, Benin Republic

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