*My name is Wisdom Donkor. I am submitting bellow comment with regard to the ICANN fellowship budget cut.* High-quality ICANN Fellowship Program is a prerequisite for societal change and progress. Societies without strong capacity faces difficulties in producing and utilizing reliable evidence for development planning and action, generating new ideas to drive economic growth and social wellbeing, deciding on trade-offs in the choice of interventions, and gauging the impact and performance of policies, programs and investments. Robust ICANN Fellowship program will advances the production and utilization of sound evidence for internet development across board, most especially in the developing world that is yet to see total development. In one of the most recent and trenchant affirmations of the importance of building capacities within the internet governance space to help build sustainable human resource capacities to supporting the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across nations. The ICANN fellowship program largely has strengthen ICANN and the IG communities in this regard. The UN and it stakeholders, DIPLO Foundation, IGF etc, keeps referencing to the ICANN fellowship program as one key program that is helping bridge the digital gaps most especially in the low income countries. The module of the ICANN Fellowship program has been emulated in several ICT and other IG related programs. There is still huge deficit both in human capacities and awareness creation within the low income countries and Efforts must be doubled in capacity development and extending the program to the unreached. The sustainable developments goals (SDG’s) particularly recognizes the need for internet governance capacity building as key to: 1. the generation of new and locally relevant knowledge 2. the full and safe operationalization and transfer of existing technologies 3. the promotion and acceleration of human, institutional and infrastructural development 4. and the alignment of social and healthy systems to deliver efficient, accessible, and affordable services. With this in mind, I dont think the ICANN Fellowship program has ever let ICANN down on its mandate to building capacities and reaching out to the unreached specially from within the ldeveloping countries that seems to be lagging behind or marking-time on development. Huge amount of work has been done and more work needs to be done to realizing the dreams we all want to see. The evidence is there for all to see. When you look at Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, Gambia, DR Congo, Egypt, Rwanda, Togo, Senegal, Cameron, Armenia, Pakistan, India etc. and even Madagascar that seems to be blank on the map is now seeing the light through the ICANN fellowship empowerment. ICANN is almost present in every Conner of the world through the fellowship program. Fellows are really working using their little resources to reach out to others in their local communities just to make sure ICANN message gets to everyone. I am very happy that ICANN over the years through the fellowship program have produce great leaders, many of which are taken position within ICANN and IG communities. eg. At-Large, NCUC, NCSG, GNSO, GAC, ccNSO, NomCom, SSAC, RSSAC, IGF MAG, Diplo and even the ICANN board working and promoting ICANN values across nations. There have been a call from the public to restore the ICANN Fellowship budget CUT, 279 petitioners across the ICANN Communities signed the petition asking for ICANN to restore the fellowship budget CUT in full. The simple question ????? i will ask ICANN Board is, what else can ICANN do apart from improving the fellowship program instead of CUTTING its Budget. In view of all this, I do not think CUTTING the fellowship budget by half (50%) is the way to go. ICANN should be seen as growing and strengthening it support base (The fellowship program) and not the other way round (slowing down the Fellowship program by pulling down its success over the years) with the intention of frustrating the program. There is public call to restoring the fellowship budget in full and My humble plead to ICANN CEO, the Board and all that is concern with the budget CUT to please reconsider their decision to restore the fellowship budget in full and if possible increase it. *WISDOM DONKOR (S/N Eng.)* *Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation* E-government, Internet Governance & Open Government Data and platforms Specialist ICANN Fellow / UN IGF MAG Member, ISOC Member, Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) Member, Diplo Foundation Member, OGP Open Data WG Member, GODAN Member. National SDG's data Roadmaps Advisory Board Member, Ghana Ghana Energy Data Task-force Member Ghana OGP Advisory Committee Member Email: wisdom.dk@gmail.com Skype: wisdom_dk facebook: Kwasi Wisdom Linkdin: Kwasi Wisdom