Speaker – Prof. Nii Narko Quaynor
Nii Quaynor graduated from Dartmouth College in 1972 with B.A (Engineering Science) and received a Ph.D (Computer Science) in distributed systems in 1977 from S.U.N.Y at Stony Brook.
Nii worked with Digital Equipment Corporation, DEC, U.S.A from 1977 till 1992 building high-performance and fault tolerant systems. He returned to Ghana to initiate the computer science department at the University of Cape Coast, UCC, in 1979 and again to establish the first ISP in West Africa, operated by Network Computer Systems (NCS), in 1993.
Nii taught at microprocessor colleges of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy in several developing countries in the ‘80s.
Nii led the formation of several regional technical institutions of the internet in the ‘90s that coordinate and administer the Internet in Africa today, including African Network Operators Group (Afnog), Afrinic, Africa’s numbers registry, a community of African ccTLDs, Aftld, African Research and Education Networks, Afren, African accredited Registrars, Afregistrar, organization of CERTs in Africa, Africacert and Dotafrica initiative
Nii has served on several Boards, Commissions, and Task Forces globally including ICANN, UN ICT Task Force, UN IGF-MAG, Global Commission on Internet Governance, ICANN Strategy Panel on Public Responsibility, National IT Agency, Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlements System, National Identification Authority, Ghana News Agency, Council of the University of Ghana, West and Central Africa Research and Education Network, Wacren, and the Electronic Communications Tribunal of Ghana
Nii is currently the Chairman of Ghana Dot Com, a registrar, and an adjunct professor of Computer Science at the University of Cape Coast. He is a Patron of the Internet Society of Ghana, a member of the steering committee of the blockchain governance initiative network, Bgin, and a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
Nii received the Internet Society’s prestigious Jonathan Postel Service Award for pioneering work to advance the Internet in Africa in December 2007. He was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in August 2013 for his pioneering role in the development of the Internet in Africa. Nii received the Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah Genius Award for Information Communication Technology in December 2014 and was also awarded ICANN’s Multi-Stakeholder Ethos award in June 2015.
