.africa

Status:	Proposed
country:	African region
Type:	GeoTLD
More information:

.africa (DotAfrica) is a proposed new gTLD for the promotion of African Identity (businesses, people and culture) on the Internet. There are currently several known applicants vying for the TLD. These entities include DotConnectAfrica (DCA) based in Nairobi, Kenya and Incorporated in Mauritius Africa. DCA is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization founded by Sophia Bekele; the Africa Top Level Domain (AfTLD) Organization, a non-profit organization also established in Mauritius headed by Vika Mpisane; and the African Registry Consortium (ARC), owned and operated by Domain Name Services (Pty) Ltd. and Convergence Partners (Pty) Ltd. and still yet another one AfricaOnespace.org, who came recently into the scene whose owners are affiliated with ARC, the same Executives in UNIFORUM SA.

Background

DotAfrica was originally proposed by non-African companies during ICANN's first new gTLD application round in 2000. The application was strongly opposed, however, by some African professionals. They perceived that the application was not beneficial for the African continent. Subsequently, the proposal to develop the DotAfrica TLD was first introduced by Sophia Bekele to the African Members of the ICANN Board in 2006 and later on to different African organizations of the ICANN community during the ICANN 28 meeting in Lisbon, Portugal in 2007. She emphasized the importance of the .africa domain name for the benefit of the African region’s internet development and how it could serve as global identity for African internet users, as .asia and .eu do for their regions. She pointed out that .africa would enable users to express their membership in a larger Pan-African and African community. Bekele cited that the DotAfrica proposalwas compliant with the objectives and policies of various international organizations aiming to strengthen Africa's ICT sector, including the WSIS, the African Union, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)..

During the ICANN 32 International ICANN Paris Public Meeting, Bekele officially announced her organization's interest to apply for the .africa TLD through DotConnectAfrica.

DotConnectAfrica Bid for DotAfrica to iCANN

Sophia Bekele further develop the proposal and an awareness creation of the DotAfrica gTLD through her non-profit organization DotConnectAfrica (DCA), which would serve as the sponsor and registry operator. Since then, Bekele has actively campaigned for the .africa proposal among organizations and communities in the African region and the global African and internet community. In 2008, Bekele announced DCA's DotAfrica initiative during the public forum at the ICANN Paris Meeting.

AUC Letter of Endorsement to DCA's DotAfrica Project

On August 27, 2009, the African Union Commission (AUC) expressed its support for DCA's DotAfrica Project, also expressing a willingness to provide assistance in the coordination of the initiative with the African Ministers and Governments. Furthermore, the AUC endorsed the DCA initiative. The letter was signed by AUC Chairman Jean Ping. In addition, During the 2009 African Union conference at Johannesburg, South Africa, the AU Ministers expressed their support of the DotAfrica proposal and acknowledged its possible benefits for the development of the Internet within the African continent. This was based on the proposal submitted to the AU by DCA during the previous years and after DCA was already endorsed by the African. The Ministers adopted a resolution to establish .africa as a continental TLD for use by organizations, businesses and individuals with guidance from African Internet agencies..

AUC's interest in DotAfrica

In a later development after endorsement to DCA, the African union stated that it was mandated by its Member States to establish cooperation and partnership with Internet stakeholders, as well as in the preparation and submission of an application for DotAfrica as new gTLD to ICANN.,

On May 12, 2010, nearly eight months after endorsing DCA, the AUC tried to retract the endorsement made by AUC Chairman Jean Ping to DCA, under what DCA alleged is a forged letter. A year after this alleged retraction, the AUC issues a clarification stating they are supporting or endorsing any individual or organization. In addition, the AUC announced that entities must submit an Expression of Interest (EOI), on which they would base their selection and endorsement.

In 2010 the African Union called for a dotAfrica TaskForce that did not include DCA and drafted a document expressing interest in owning and leading the dotafrica gTLD and applying to ICANN directly., . The AU then issued an Expression for dotafrica gTLD for organizations to apply directly to African Union for the operations of a dotAfrica Registry. Since then, African entities has been interested in the implementation of DotAfrica as a new gTLD, including AfTLD, and ARC. The DCA opposed this move of African Union calling for a mandate for an African Registry, saying African Union does not have a mandate to give a mandate..

DCA Reaction to African Union EOI

DCA criticized the AU's decision to implement the EOI submission competition process for its endorsement on the ICANN application for .africa. In a statement, DCA pointed out that the AU's objective to implement transparency and accountability in the EOI process sounded hollow and unbelievable and emphasized that the AU's clarification was untruthful to the extent that it did not acknowledge its previous endorsement to DCA.

DCA also said that the EOI process had already been compromised, as the AU Task Force had openly expressed its support for AfTLD during the 2011 annual African ccTLD event in Ghana. Additionally, the AU Task Force are the same members that have expressing Interest in the dotAfrica proposal for themselves, therefore a major conflict of interest exists. Furthermore, DCA encouraged all entities to ignore the AU EOI process and requested the AU Commission to stop the process immediately.,.

DCA Yes to DotAfrica Campaign

DCA has announced that it plans to continue with its application for .africa with or without the AUC's support, as it believed the original endorsements granted to it by the AUC is valid and calling any retraction attempt as sabotage and unsuccessful. At ICANN 40 in San Francisco in March 2011, DCA and its delegation introduced its Yes to DotAfrica campaign and spoke with registry vendors about DCA's EOI to apply for .africa. During the meeting, DCA claimed that it received support from a majority of the ICANN community for its initiative. Bekele said that collaboration and non-competitive collaboration are possible in the bid for .africa and should be considered. She stated that her organization is open to discuss a collaborative bid. She further recalled DCA's initial commitment in their press statement after its endorsement by AUC saying "We will welcome guidance from all African Internet agencies in our organized effort; as well as the same from our international partners”.

AfTLD Bid for DotAfrica

On March 9, 2011, AfTLD Chairman Vikas Mpisane announced that AfTLD would seek the endorsement of the African Union in connection with its application to become the registry operator for the proposed .africa gTLD.. According to Mpisane, the organization is interested managing both DotAfrica and its French version, .afrique, which is notable, as a purported 50% of Africans speak French. The organization is confident that it will be successful with its bid for the DotAfrica project, given the support it has received from the African community, African governments and its close relationship with other Africa internet organizations such as AfNOG, AfriNIC and AfrISPA.

Following its announcement to seek the AU endorsement, during the 5th Annual African ccTLD Event in Accra, Ghana on May 2011, Haruna Iddrissu, Ghana Minister of Communications and Dr. Nii Quaynor, Chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) Internet Task Force, expressed their support for AfTLD's bid to become the registry operator of .africa.. DCA opposed to the AFTLD bid due to the conflict of interest of the AUC Task force members aligning themselves with members of AFTLD, calling the proposal campaigning against it as the the "GAMEKEEPER is also the POACHER!!!". Also stating that the African ccTLDs do not own the AFTLD, thus is unrepresentative of Africa as AFTLD claims.. The AFTLD bid then did not success on its own.

ARC Bid for DotAfrica

The African Registry Consortium (ARC) was also interested in bidding to operate DotAfrica, and willing to partner with AfTLD and offered to provide technical, operational and financial resources for the preparation of a strong application for the management of the DotAfrica registry. However, the ARC bid failed due to strong opposition by DCA which alleged opportunistic business model and no consultation with community.

AUC and Request for DotAfrica Reserved Names

In 2011, African Union considered placing DotAfrica on the list of reserved names for the new gTLD program, making it so that no group other than the African Union could apply for it. This was strongly opposed by DotConnectAfrica in Dakar, Senegal who believed that the .africaTLD should not be delegated by the structure the African Union identified and tried to delegate outside of the ICANN news gTLD programme. DCA won its case over this matter and the TLD was not reserved.

UNIFORUM Appointment for DOTAfrica gTLD by AUC

In February 2012, the AU called for an open RFP for companies to provide AUC with proposal for the operation of the DotAfrica gTLD and stated that this was the only basis for endorsement from AUC. It then announced that it had appointed UniForum SA, registry operator for .za, as the registry operator for .africa application in conjunction with AfTLD. Later that month, it was announced that Sedari would assist in supporting the application with its financial, technical and policy support services. In response to these announcements, DCA issued a Press Briefing press release accusing the AU's selection of UniForum SA to be in bad faith, and that the AU's power to select a back-end registry operator for the .africa TLD is illegitimate. and also that the AU and UNIFORUM should beware of Wrongdoing over DotAfrica

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