IGF 2024

Martin has over 30 years of experience working on ICT deployment, innovation, research and development, policy, regulation, and legislation. He is currently a Senior Manager and Technical Lead at the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) Africa. He’s leading a number of key projects in Africa, including KPMG-GFCE Technical Assistance (World Bank Funded) Project for Togo aimed at Enhancing Regional Cooperation for Cyber Resilience through the Centre for Coordination and Research in Cybersecurity (ACCRC); African Union (AU)-CSIRT/CERT Project (LuxDev Funded) to Secure Africa’s digital Infrastructure, and just concluded leading the AU-GFCE Collaboration Project (Bill & Melinda Gates Funded) to Enhance Cyber Capacity Building (CCB) and Cyber Resilience across all 55 Africa Union member states.

Prior to joining the GFCE, he was the Head of Technical Support & Consultancy (TSC) Division at the Commonwealth Telecommunication Organisation (CTO) in the UK for seven 7 years. He was responsible for managing the delivery of ICT technical support and development assistance to The Commonwealth (which consists of 56 member countries) and beyond.

Before joining the CTO, he worked as a Senior Researcher & Technical Lead with British
Telecommunications (BT) for 10 years. While at BT he worked on various major projects including BT 21st Century Next Generation Network, developing ICT security solutions, policy, and strategies for BT’s lines of business, including cutting-edge research on Future Internet Architecture, and pioneered development of a Global Best Practice framework for mitigating Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) on the Internet.

Martin has been involved in various ICT projects mainly in Europe, the US, the Caribbean, Asia Pacific, and extensively in Africa. He is also a technical expert for the European Commission (EC), World Bank, UN, ITU, and the GFCE. He has led and delivered a number of national strategies in Cybersecurity, Broadband, Telecommunication Regulation, and Digital Transformation for a number of organisations in various countries.

In addition to the current projects, he has led various other global projects, working with
various countries, to develop National Cybersecurity Strategies, National Broadband
Strategies, Universal Service Funding Frameworks, CERT/CSIRT, Regulations, Policies and Legislations. Some of these countries include Botswana, Cameroon, Uganda, Fiji, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Senegal, Eswatini, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Seychelles, Namibia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, The Commonwealth of Dominica, Bermuda, Afghanistan, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, Montserrat, Trinidad & Tobago, South Africa, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and Liberia.

Martin is accredited for being among the first Kenyan Internet engineers to bring Full Internet deployment to Kenya in the mid-90s, while working as Principal Engineer for African Regional Centre for Computing (ARCC), Nairobi, Kenya.

He has a PhD in Communications Engineering and holds several patents. He is an alumni of
Egerton University (KE), Nairobi University (KE), Bristol University (UK), University of Aberdeen (UK), Cambridge University, Judge Business School (UK), and Harvard Kennedy School (USA).