Arsene Tungali

Organization:	Rudi International
Affiliation:	Fellowship Program, I* Organization
Region:	Africa
Country:	The Democratic Republic of the Congo
Email:	arsenebaguma [at] gmail.com
Website:	https://about.me/ArseneTungali
Facebook:	Arsene Tungali
LinkedIn:	Arsene Tungali
Twitter:	@arsenebaguma

Arsene Tungali Baguma is a Congolese (DRC) citizen considered by many as an inspiration and a role model for his work with and around young people. A social entrepreneur, he is running both a non-profit and a business. Arsene is also a published author and a blogger who has traveled in over 20 countries worldwide.

Mr. Tungali has received recognition such as the 2015 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders award, giving him the opportunity to join the program started by President Barack Obama to nurture and network the next generation of African leaders. He earned a Certificate in Civic Leadership from the University of Delaware and an internship with the El Pomar Foundation, in Colorado Springs, USA.

He was named in November 2018 as one of the "100 Young Congolese Leaders of Hope", as well as among the "50 Most Influential Young Congolese" in 2017 by Kivuzik Magazine in the Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy category.

Professional work

Current

Arsene is a Co-Founder and Executive Director of Rudi International since July 2012. Rudi International is a Congo-based organization supporting the people in need in areas such as education, capacity building and advocacy. Rudi is well known in the Francophone African region as one of the organizations working at the forefront of digital rights, Internet development, and capacity building. In this area, Rudi has convened in November 2018, the first-ever Conference on Human Rights at Digital Age in the DRC that brought together 200+ digital rights activists, lawyers, human rights defenders from Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya to discuss and build support around major digital rights threats in the region.

In February 2016, Mr. Tungali started a multi-services company, Smart Services Sarl (where he serves as Chief Executive Officer and employing 3 full-time staff and up to 4 consultants), a company specialized, among others, in translation and interpretation services, benefiting individuals as well as companies. Smart Services Sarl has served the major humanitarian organizations operating in the region in their language needs. The Congo is a Francophone country and many of these international organizations are coming from English-speaking countries; they have therefore found a trusted partner on the ground who knows the local culture and have relied on the support of this company to provide professional language services. Mr. Tungali is a sworn interpreter.

Past

His past work experience includes working with:

- The UNICEF DRC as Consultant in Communications and Advocacy, where he supported the regional office (based in Goma) in all their communications and advocacy plans, strategies. He wrote blog entries and supported field visits from Unicef international staff, ambassadors.

- Peace One Day as Field Officer, where he supported and represented the British peace-making organization's efforts in the DRC and the Great Lakes Region of Africa for their 2014 Peace Campaign, leading to the massive celebration of the International Peace Day.

- The Mutaani Project as Web Editor, where he was in charge of producing articles for the website and training web journalists in web content production. Before joining Mutaani Project, he worked in the same capacity for Now Africa CAN, an organization dedicated at showcasing the positive side of the African continent and its people.

Volunteering positions

Mr. Tungali believes in volunteerism as a way to give back to his community. He has supported a number of organizations in an advisory capacity as well as an Intern such as with The Congo Tree where he served as a leadership trainer and mentoring young leaders.

Additionally, in 2013, Mr.Tungali started the Mabigwa Forum, an annual gathering that brings together emerging leaders from different sectors to connect, inspire, and get inspired. This annual event has inspired many emerging leaders in the Congo and supported them into expanding their business reach, improve their leadership capabilities and give them access to a network of like-minded leaders on whom they can rely on.

ICT Policy and Internet governance work

Internet Governance Space

Mr Tungali is consulting in Internet governance projects since 2011 after he attended the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a youth participant. He then got involved in Internet Governance (IG) related debates and discussions on a local, regional and global levels, attending the African IGF in 2013 and in 2016 (after he went to the 2016 African School on IG in Durban, South Africa), the global IGF as an Internet Society Ambassador (2015 and 2016). He then was appointed in November 2018 by the UN General Secretary to serve on the 2019 IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group (IGF MAG), working towards the preparation of the 14th Internet Governance Forum scheduled for November 2019 in Berlin, Germany.

Arsene is well known as an advocate of an open, free and accessible Internet; he has been fighting against all types of online violations that some authoritarian governments are imposing on their citizens. He has spoken, contributed to researches in the area of Internet freedom in Africa and globally, focusing on issues of Internet disruptions, surveillance and other privacy issues.

ICANN Space

ICANN 51 in Los Angeles was Tungali's first ICANN Meeting, and as an ICANN Fellow, was the first Congolese youth to attend meetings like ICANN and IGF. He then got interested and joined working groups, constituencies such as the Non-Commercial User Constituency (NCUC, a constituency under the NCSG) and is now very interested in the African DNS policy development. He then came back for the ICANN 55 meeting in Marrakech and ICANN 59 in Johannesburg as a returning fellow and coach. Tungali was elected to join the GNSO Councill (seated at ICANN60 in Abu Dhabi) for a two years term, representing the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG).

Of what he hopes to accomplish in ICT in the future, Mr Tungali says, "My biggest plan is to engage more young people in my country in Internet-related topics mainly regarding their online presence. The DRC is a fast growing its internet community, so many young people have started using the internet. I feel it is time to prepare them on how they can best benefit from the Internet and influence its policies." He is open to all new opportunities that will help young people in the DRC and hopes to engage in constructive discussions.