The IGF conferences proved their utility as global discussion platforms in terms of bringing all stakeholders around the same issue in a bottom up and open process. It is equally important to debate Internet issues at the national level with the participation of government, private sector, civil society, academia and technical community.

The Liberia Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is Liberia’s leading multi-stakeholder forum on digital and internet policy issues.

The inaugural event will take place this year in Monrovia and bring together over 100 representatives from government, civil society, and the private sector to tackle pressing public policy issues facing the internet.

The Liberia IGF is a national initiative of the global United-Nations-convened Internet Governance Forum, which holds annual meetings at different locations around the world. The Liberia IGF will produce a report detailing the unique, national priorities facing Liberian stakeholders in attendance. This report will then be fed into the global IGF.

Mission and Objectives

Mission

Liberia IGF is a national Internet Governance Forum (IGF) initiative devoted to open, inclusive and transparent dialogue on internet governance issues among all stakeholders in Liberia. The Liberia national internet governance forum aims to place Liberia on global Internet Governance (IG) agenda. The Liberia IGF emanated from the need to gather relevant stakeholders from the country in one place to discuss the current state , necessities and emerging internet related issues in Liberia. Many different stakeholder groups in Liberia have been active in their own fields of expertise but there has been a lack of inter stakeholder collaboration and an absence of a bottom up process. Liberia IGF intends to learn from best practices of the global IGF. Liberia IGF will encourage all actors to actively participate in the process.

When selecting panels for the program agenda, the Liberia Multistakeholder Group (LMAG) will adopt a participatory approach that includes multi-stakeholders participation from civil society, academia, private and public sectors.  The MAG will also ensure gender and generation balance.

The LMAG proposes an agenda and publishes it on the Liberia IGF website.  Before that, monthly meetings would be held to reach a consensus on the agenda and the topics. 

Objectives

• Engage the community in discussing Internet Governance issues
• Facilitate a multistakeholder dialogue between different bodies dealing with the internet to share expertise, best practices and to identify common grounds
• Highlight the importance of the internet in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

 Liberia IGF
In 2012, Liberia made a significant start to discussion internet development in a guided process. Liberia with no support hosted the first ever national Internet Governance Forum in recent time in 2020. A key outcome of the national and regional Internet Governance fora was the need for capacity building to enable the multi stakeholder community participate actively in public policy development processes locally and internationally led to the recognition by the UN IGF Secretariat
The national forum feeds into the regional and global Internet Governance Fora through a chain of reporting and representation to the regional and global Internet Governance Fora to ensure a bottom-up Internet policy development processes and a strong link between global internet policies and the national one.