The maiden edition of the Universal Acceptance (UA) Day celebrations by AAU was held successfully on Tuesday 28 March 2023 to create awareness about Universal Acceptance as a prelude to the launch of the Universal Acceptance Readiness project, a new initiative between the Association of African Universities (AAU) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The event which was collaboratively organized by the partners, AAU and ICANN, saw various stakeholders from the African Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) participating both physically at the AAU Secretariat in Accra and virtually via the AU Zoom platform. These stakeholders included Vice Chancellors, Rectors, Deans and Heads of Departments, Technical staff, lecturers, and students of various HEIs on the continent and beyond. Directors and IT Professionals from various private sector organizations and institutions were also in attendance.

The theme for the event, “Universal Acceptance (UA) and What it Means”, provided an opportunity for participants to be educated on the meaning of Universal Acceptance. Universal Acceptance principles ensure that email addresses and all valid domain names, including long new top-level domains like .org, .net, .com, and .info which are part of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), can be used by all internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems regardless of script, language and character length. UA generally supports the ability for email mailbox names to use characters in local languages and scripts through Email Address Internationalization (EAI) standards.

Ms. Nodumo Dhlamini, the Director of ICT Services, Communications, and Knowledge Management at the AAU, delivered a speech on behalf of the Secretary-General of the AAU and began by giving a brief history of the AAU as an institution and its vision of being a lead advocate for higher education on the African continent. AAU’s strategic priorities are to promote a favourable policy environment, strengthen institutional capacity of stakeholders, promote harmonization standardization for competitiveness and collaboration, and mobilize resources to help sustain its programmes.

Ms. Dhlamini reiterated the partnership that was established in December 2022 between ICANN, AAU, and other organizations which launched the Coalition for Digital Africa Initiative, during the Internet Governance Forum themed, “Connecting All People and Safeguarding Human Rights” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She went on to explain the concept of Universal Acceptance and the need for its adoption in our various higher education institutions. She concluded her speech by expressing excitement about the participation of students in the event saying that they would go into the industry after school as champions of Universal Acceptance principles.

The Senior IT Officer at the AAU, Mr. Abednego Corletey, who was the main speaker for the event, made a presentation on the theme, “Universal Acceptance of Domain Names and Emails”, stressing what Universal Acceptance meant to the continent. He stated that, “Through Universal Acceptance, all those who develop, provide or manage online websites and applications will have the opportunity to enable users globally to experience the social and economic power of the internet through making their systems universally compliant”.  Mr. Corletey engaged participants in hands-on tasks through case studies and the self-verification of the compliance of their institutional websites using the EAI checker.

Some comments and recommendations were made by some of the 48 representatives from various stakeholder institutions in Ghana who participated physically at the Secretariat and over 150 participants who connected via the AAU Zoom Platform. These comments included a proposal for a collaboration between the AAU and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) toward the incorporation of the Universal Acceptance concepts in the IT Curriculum in Ghana. Another proposal of collaboration between the AAU and various institutes of languages such as the Ghana Institute of Languages to sensitize the public on the use of scripts in local languages, an extension of UA Day outreach to other parts of the continent, and the introduction of UA on assistive technologies for the visually impaired.

The Universal Acceptance Day celebration ended with closing remarks from the Mistress of the Ceremony and an official announcement of the launch of the Universal Acceptance Readiness project, slated for Thursday, April 13, 2023, at the AAU Secretariat in Accra, Ghana. A follow-up workshop is expected to be held at the same venue on Friday 14 April 2023 to give participants hands-on experience with the latest tools and technologies in the areas of making email systems and other communication platforms within Africa’s higher education institutions, ready for Universal Acceptance (UA) and Email Address Internationalization (EAI).

Article by – Ms. Naomi Darko, Communications Assistant, AAU.