Progress in Cryptology - Africacrypt 2008: First International Conference on Cryptology in Africa

The AFRICACRYPT 2008 conference was held during June 11-14, 2008 in Casablanca, Morocco. Upon the initiative of the organizers from the Ecole n- male sup erieure in Casablanca, this event was the ?rst international research conference in Africa dedicated to cryptography. The conference was honored by the presence of the invited speakers Bruce Schneier, Jacques Stern, and Alexander W. Dent who gave talks entitled "The Psychology of Security" "Modern Cryptography: A Historical Perspective" and "ABriefHistoryofProvably-SecurePublic-KeyEncryption", respectively.These proceedings include papers by Bruce Schneier and by Alexander Dent. The conference received 82 submissions on November 24, 2007. They went through a careful doubly anonymous review process. This was run by the iChair software written by Thomas Baign eres and Matthieu Finiasz. Every paper - ceived at least three review reports. After this period, 25 papers were accepted on February 12, 2008. Authors then had the opportunity to update their papers until March 13, 2008. The present proceedings include all the revised papers. At the end of the review process, the paper entitled "An Authentication Protocol with Encrypted Biometric Data" written by Julien Bringer and Herv e Chabanne was elected to receive the Africacrypt 2008 Best Paper Award. I had the privilege to chair the Program Committee. I would like to thank all committee members for their tough work on the submissions, as well as all externalreviewersfortheirsupport.IalsothankmyassistantThomasBaign eres formaintainingtheserverandhelpingmetorunthesoftware.Ithanktheinvited speakers, the authors of the best paper, the authors of all submissions. They all contributed to the success of the conference.