Delegates from across the continent are gathering in Abuja today as the African Telecommunications Union opens the Special Session of its Administrative Council, the first formal step in a fortnight of meetings building towards the main ATU Plenipotentiary Conference in Abuja later this month.
The council session, scheduled to run from 16 to 17 July, brings together representatives from ATU member states to settle outstanding administrative and procedural matters before larger gatherings take over the Nigerian capital.
It will be followed by a CPL Preparatory Committee meeting on 20 and 21 July, before the ATU Plenipotentiary Conference in Abuja itself opens on 23 July and closes the following day.
Officially known as CPL-26, the conference marks the seventh ordinary session of the Union’s Conference of Plenipotentiaries, its highest decision-making organ, which convenes only once every four years.
Algeria’s Minister of Post and Telecommunications, Sid Ali Zerrouki, who chairs the Conference of Plenipotentiaries, led a coordination meeting via video link in the days before travelling to Abuja, according to a report by the Algerian Press Service, as officials finalised last details for the gathering.
The most consequential item on the agenda is the election of a new ATU Secretary-General, a position currently held by John Omo, whose term concludes at the end of this year.
Four candidates from across the continent are contesting the role, according to Space in Africa, which reported that the winner will serve a four-year term running from 1 January 2027 to 31 December 2030, with the possibility of one further term.
Among the contenders is Cynthia Lesufi of South Africa, currently Minister Counsellor at her country’s Permanent Mission to the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, who has represented Africa at successive ITU Plenipotentiary Conferences and chairs the ITU Council Working Group on the World Summit on the Information Society.
Delegates at the ATU Plenipotentiary Conference in Abuja will also elect member states to sit on the Administrative Council for the 2027 to 2030 period, filling seats allocated across the Union’s five geographic sub-regions of Central, Eastern, Northern, Southern and Western Africa.
Nigeria, as host nation, holds an additional reserved seat on the council by virtue of housing the ATU headquarters.
In the weeks leading up to the conference, Omo held a series of engagements on the margins of the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, where he briefed ministers on logistics and encouraged wider participation, according to a report by TechReview Africa.
Mozambique’s Minister of Communications and Digital Transformation, Americo Muchanga, and Tunisia’s Minister of Communication Technologies, Sofiene Hemissi, both confirmed their attendance during those talks, while the African Union’s Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy, Lerato Mataboge, also pledged to attend.
Omo separately met Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, to discuss the country’s arrangements as host of the ATU Plenipotentiary Conference in Abuja, along with counterparts from Malawi, Botswana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Beyond the leadership contest, the gathering will shape continental positions on digital infrastructure, spectrum policy and international ICT regulation, areas the ATU has coordinated since its founding in 1977 as a specialised telecommunications agency of the then Organisation of African Unity.
The Union was restructured in 1999 to bring public institutions and private sector players into a single forum, and it now counts 52 member states across the continent.
Ahead of the main conference, a Heads of Regulators Session themed “Building Africa’s Network Intelligence Ecosystem for Evidence-Based Regulation” is due to take place on 21 July, according to the ATU’s own events calendar, gathering telecom regulators to discuss data-driven approaches to oversight.
A separate workshop with the mobile industry body GSMA, dubbed the Digital Africa Summit Workshop, is also billed for 22 July, immediately before the ATU Plenipotentiary Conference in Abuja formally opens.
For Nigeria, hosting the conference places the country at the centre of a continental conversation on connectivity at a time when its own digital economy ministry has been pushing reforms around identity systems and broadband access.
The outcome of the Secretary-General election, together with the composition of the incoming Administrative Council, will shape the ATU’s strategic direction through 2030, including how the continent coordinates its position at global forums such as the International Telecommunication Union’s own Plenipotentiary Conference later this year.
