Omo Oaiya
Chief Strategy Officer
West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN)

Omo Oaiya is the Chief Strategy Officer of the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) where he drives strategic growth, facilitating plans and partnerships to sustain the corporate initiatives of its constituent national networks.  He recently relinquished responsibilities as pioneer CTO but continues to work with development partners and sister regional networks on the technical development of high-capacity Internet networks for research and education across Africa in AfricaConnect.

He was network manager and system developer in different sectors before offering consultancy and project management support to research and academic institutions in Nigeria and other parts of Africa for the last twenty years.  A newly certified SIM3 Auditor, he uses the model developed with the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) to assess the governance, performance and function of security teams and processes.

Omo has a Pharmacy degree from the University of Benin, Nigeria and maintains interests in health as volunteer team lead for the IT development group in the Peoples Open Access Initiative (Peoples-uni), a UK based initiative providing postgraduate public health education via Internet-based e-learning.

He also volunteers in the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as one of the at-large representatives from AFRINIC, the regional Internet registry for Africa. The purpose of the ASO is to review and develop recommendations on Internet Protocol (IP) address policy and to advise the ICANN Board.

Recently, he has been promoting an NREN-NRI model for the emergence and support of Youth Internet Governance platforms in the African Research and Education Networking Forum (AfREN).  The focus is the empowerment of students on campuses in NREN communities to stimulate the growth of these frameworks, as they form the majority of the target audience.