Coura Fall

Country:	Senegal
Email:	courafall [at] orange.sn

Coura Fall is a Coordinator for GOREeTIC, which is a francophone advocacy network for Internet access in Africa. She has been an advisory member in the Multistakeholder Advisory Group in the IGF since 2008, which is a 50 member group that advises the Secretary General of the U.N. on Internet governance issues. Ms. Fall is also the owner of Computer Frontiers, which provides staff and outsourcing consultancy services. The company has a number of U.S. partners, including a project that sees them handling U.S. visa processing in 8 countries. She is a Founder, Board member, and current Treasurer of the American (U.S.) Chamber of Commerce in Senegal.

She is a Board Member at ACSIS, the African Civil Society on the Information Society.

Association for Progressive Communication

Ms. Fall has held a number of positions and led a variety of projects with the Association for Progressive Communication (APC); the association is an activist organization that strives to bring the Internet and IT to areas of the world that it does not currently connect or those areas that can't support or afford it as of yet. They hope to build stronger, better communities through the implementation of ICT solutions. She first began working with them in 2005, when she led a project that had APC support. That first project was CATIA, or Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa, and she was the lead catalyst for the Senegalese area of focus, as the project touched many parts of Africa. Her position saw her bringing a civil society perspective to bear on the ICT capacity building initiatives and working closely with the media. In June, 2007, she began working with APC as the Africa ICT policy Advocacy Coordinator; she held this position until 2009. During that time she developed research and information dissemination strategies, continued to implement and utilize emerging IT solutions, focused discussions on the ICT problems and issues in Africa, and coordinated with other International IT and Internet governance and policy bodies, such as the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) and the IGF. She also was involved in project CICEWA, which is based on a research into the implementation of telecom reform policy and sub-regional connectivity in Africa.

Her current work with GOREeTIC is an extension of her prior work with ACP and the CICEWA project. It is a network, created in 2008, that brings together APC members of French West Africa to organize capacity building, advocacy, and Internet governance forums, and create other opportunities for ICT education and implementation.

Career History

Ms. Fall has broad experience in the commercial field and has worked with several companies including Access Telecom Senegal, Telecel Cote d’Ivoire, Globe Access Internet (Ivory Coast) , Sentel GSM (Senegal) Groupe Chaka and Netcom Group. She has been active in the creation of regional and international IT development fora, such as AfrISPA, ACSIS Senegal, SENELOGIC, and others.

External Links

Coura Fall - May 2009 IGF MAG Meeting