PRESENTED BY KUDZAI MUBAIWA Co-founder & Incubation Manager at iZone Kudzai is the co-founder and incubator manager for iZone, a pre-incubation program that provides a platform for capacity building of enterprise owners in the digital age. She has participated in and presented at economic development, innovation and technology platforms in East and Southern Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. She writes regularly on incubation and innovation spaces. • The internet, like land, should be considered, as a critical means or factor of production, which should be made available without discrimination to the citizenry. • There is need to promote enterprise development in the digital world and support young Zimbabweans to build online and offline businesses. In that respect financial and digital literacy are of essence. than not, taken advantage of by the ‘bigger’ players, who are most of the time, the mobile network operators or internet service providers. It is important that the governance framework ensures that it protects and promotes start-ups to allow space for the start-ups to incubate, nurture and grow. • Zimbabwe needs to create an environment that promotes crowd-sourcing business without users fearing victimisation. • The internet should be a safe space that promotes the ability to interact freely and promote start-ups. Zimbabwean start-ups are more often Panel Discussion Points • Monopolistic internet control has been transferred from government to the private sector. Internet governance policies should ensure that this is dealt with to allow for innovation and the development and sustainability of start-ups. • There is need for government to make the internet more accessible to the general public by building more free WI FI points in and around the country as well as ensure that access is backed by constant supply of electricity as power cuts are an impediment to connectivity. The government position is that infrastructure must be opened up and conversations with relevant stakeholders on modalities are underway. • There is a need for service providers to consider taking up local web hosting services. In general the citizenry feel safer hosting their sites from outside Zimbabwe. TelOne is exploring the opportunities that local web hosting brings with it. The current experience is that hosting websites outside is cheaper, but poses challenges on data storage agreements. • Participants generally felt that infrastructure sharing policy would be a step forward in ensuring universal access to broadband by the citizenry. INTERNET GOVERNANCE MULTISTAKEHOLDER CONFERENCE REPORT 2015 022 www.misazim.com @misazimbabwe MISA Zimbabwe