Alice Munyua, the Director of Africa Innovation Mradi at Mozilla Corporation, is passionate about providing ICT solutions.
Ms Munyua studied Disruptive Innovation at the Harvard Business School Executive Education. She also holds a Master’s Specialisation in Social Communications from the Pontifical Gregorian University.
She worked as a broadcaster for Radio Vaticana, Africa Service, between 1995 and 1998 when the Vatican sent her to Rwanda. She was the Project Director for Radio Kwizera (Hope) – a Jesuit Refugee Service – for two years. The belief was that radio could counter the impact the medium had been used to create during the Rwandan genocide. In 2000, she became the Project Director: Development Broadcasting Unit for Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC).
After three years at MBC, she moved to the African Women Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) as Communications Programme Officer: Communications for two years. She created FEMNET’s communications department.
Ms Munyua joined the Association for Progressive Communications as the Programme Officer (Africa) Manager in 2003. The organisation brought alternative internet service providers – that were not proprietary – together. As the National Coordinator in Kenya, she ran the Catalysing Access to ICTs in Africa (CATIA) programme. The $3.5 million three-year project worked in seven African countries to develop the ICT policy.
She co-founded Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet) in 2003. As the platform’s Convenor, she brought stakeholders, including the civil society, private sector and Government, together to develop the Kenya National ICT Policy, 2006. The policy would create an enabling environment allowing entrepreneurs to innovate on the internet.
Ms Munyua joined the Ministry of Information and Communications in 2004, and as Chair of the Kenya Internet Governance Steering Committee, she convened the Kenya and East Africa internet governance forums. Under the Ministry, in 2011, she organised and chaired the United Nations Internet Governance Forum.
She worked for the Communications Authority of Kenya, which regulates the country’s ICT industry, for six years, from 2005. She chaired the Technical Committee Board responsible for signing the licences for the country’s first two mobile operators – Safaricom and Celtel. She brought the first fibre optic cable to East Africa during her tenure and introduced freedom of information and child online protection. She served as a member of the Board of Directors until 2011.
She represented the Kenyan Government and the African Union Commission (AUC) as part of the Governmental Advisory Committee Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for 13 years. She served as Vice Chair, Co-chair and Founding Chair (Public Service Working Group) on the committee. As Vice Chair, she successfully advocated and fought for the domain name .africa, which was to be issued to an individual, on behalf of the African Union.
She was the Board Chair for the Kenya Network Information Centre between 2011 and 2013. During the same period, she served as the Steering Group Chair and a Member of the Executive Management Team at the Commonwealth Cybercrime Initiative (CCI). Thirty five organisations, including Interpol, the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation, and the Council of Europe, form the CCI consortium.
Ms Munyua has been involved with the Internet Society in various capacities, including Member of the Board of Trustees, between 2015 and 2018. She was appointed an Advisory Board Member at Global Partners Digital in 2016.
She took up the Policy Advisor job at Mozilla Corporation in 2018, where she supported the task force. She worked around the Huduma Number project – a World Bank initiative – in Kenya, supporting the Kenya Human Rights Commission and encouraging the Government to put safeguards in place before collecting sensitive data from its citizens. A year later, she was appointed the Director of Africa Innovation Mradi.
As part of Mozilla, she employs a community-based and partnership-based approach. She hopes that, as Mozilla launches through the African continent, South America, and Asia, it’ll be viewed as a global empowering company that puts people back in control of their online lives.