.africa

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

.africa is a proposed new gTLD for the promotion of African Identity (businesses, people and culture) on the Internet. There are two applicants vying for the TLD, although in the past there were rumors of several others. These entities are DotConnectAfrica (DCA), based in Nairobi, Kenya and incorporated in Mauritius. DCA is a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization founded by Sophia Bekele. Registry.Africa is the other applicant. Registry.Africa is operated by Uniforum SA and backed by the African Union. Other organizations who have in the past publicly considered submitting applications are the AfTLD and ARC.

Background

The .africa TLD 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, a proposal to develop an Africa-run .africa TLD was first introduced by Sophia Bekele to the African members of the ICANN Board in 2006, and 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 .africa proposal was 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).

In 2011, the African Union considered placing .africa 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. DCA won its case over this matter and the TLD was not reserved.

DotConnectAfrica Bid

Bekele further develop the proposal and created awareness for the TLD through her non-profit organization, DotConnectAfrica (DCA), which would serve as the sponsor and registry operator. 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 ICANN 32 in Paris.

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. 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. 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, the AUC send a letter to DCA retracting the endorsement made by Chairman Jean Ping. DCA claims that this letter was forged. A year after this retraction, the AUC issued a clarification stating they currently did not support or endorse any individual or organization, and that entities must submit an Expression of Interest (EOI), on which they would base their selection and endorsement.

DCA Reaction to African Union EOI

DCA criticized the AU's decision to implement the EOI submission competition process. 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. 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 announced that it plans to continue with its application for .africa with or without the AUC's support, as it believed the original endorsement granted to it by the AUC was 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, and that her organization was open to discuss a collaborative bid.

Registry.Africa Bid

In February 2012, the AU announced that it had chosen UniForum SA, registry operator for .za, as the registry operator for its .africa application in conjunction with AfTLD after an RFP in December 2011. 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 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.

Registry.Africa is supported by AfTLD, AfriNIC, AUC, and other organizations. Delegates from these organizations serve on a Steering Committee.

Past Bids

The following organizations had publicly expressed interest in running the .africa TLD, however in the end did not submit applications:

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 was interested in managing both DotAfrica and its French version, .afrique. The organization was confident that it would 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, incuding 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.

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.

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