.africa

Last updated

.africa
DotAfrica gTLD logo.png
Introduced11 February 2017 [1]
1 July 2017 (public availability)
TLD typeGeneric top-level domain
StatusActive
Registry Registry.Africa
Intended useSites associated with Africa, pan-Africanism, and/or the Flag of the African Union.svg  African Union
Registration restrictionsNone specified
StructureRegistrations at second level (ie. domain.africa)
Documents ICANN Registry Agreement; Policies
DNSSEC Yes [2]
Registry website registry.africa

.africa [3] is the officially designated top-level domain (TLD) for the African and Pan African communities and users wherever they reside. It is a sponsored generic top-level domain (gTLD) operated by the Registry Africa. The .africa namespace is open to individuals, businesses and organizations around the world. The .africa domains are intended to showcase their brand and commitment to the African continent, establishing a home for Africa-specific products and services, expanding a brand's regional influence and acquiring online real-estate.

Contents

The .africa domain became available to the general public on 4 July 2017. [4]

History

.africa was launched at the African Union Commission [5] in 2017.

The .africa domain name registration [6] was made available to the public in July 2017. [7] The first large corporation to adopt the .africa domain was Absa. [8] [9]

Regional support

The .africa initiative [10] is fully endorsed by the African Union Commission. [11] According to Registry Africa, 78% of African governments support the TLD. [12]

Status

The operator of the .africa gTLD [13] [14] [15] is Registry Africa. [16] Sponsoring Organisation is the ZA Central Registry [1] trading as Registry.Africa. [17]

As of January 2021, there were about 28,038 registered .africa domains from 70 accredited registrars. [18]

The .africa application that was submitted by DotConnectAfrica Trust is the subject of an unresolved disagreement with ICANN ( DCA Trust v. ICANN ) following an Independent Review Panel (IRP) process that was invoked by DCA Trust under ICANN's accountability mechanism in October 2013. The IRP was administrated by the International Center for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) of the American Arbitration Association (AAA) New York, US.[ citation needed ]

Dispute background

DCA Trust had passed all the new gTLD applicant evaluation criteria, but before the Initial Evaluation (IE) result was issued, a Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) Objection Advice that had been issued in Beijing in April 2013 was later accepted by the ICANN Board in early June 2013 which caused the ICANN Board to instruct ICANN staff that DCA Trust's .Africa new gTLD application will not be approved.

This had caused the non-completion of the evaluation of DCA Trust's application, which then led DCA Trust to challenge the ICANN Board decision through a series of accountability mechanism.

DCA Trust prevailed in the Independent Review Process against ICANN when the Panel of jurists ruled on 9 July 2015, that ICANN violated its Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation; and therefore declared "that both the actions and inactions of the Board with respect to the application of DCA Trust relating to the .AFRICA gTLD were inconsistent with the Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws of ICANN".

As a result of the IRP declaration, the ICANN Board resolved on July 16, 2015, to reinstate DCA's application back to the new gTLD Process to complete initial evaluation. The IRP ruling also ordered ICANN to continue to refrain from delegating the .AFRICA gTLD to ZA Central Registry (ZACR).

On January 20, 2016 ICANN was taken to the US Court regarding the way ICANN processed the IRP which declared DCA Trust the prevailing party in July 2015. The United States District Court, Central District of California in a ruling granted DCA Trust an Interim Relief for DotConnectAfrica and ordered ICANN to hold the delegation the .AFRICA top-level domain to ZACR. The same court also granted a Preliminary Injunction for DotConnectAfrica on April 12, 2016.

ICANN and ZACR both contested the ruling; the court dismissed ZACR from the case leading to the filing of an interlocutory appeal. Six months later, the case was moved to the Superior Court of California owing to lack of jurisdiction. Superior Court Judge Howard Halm denied the motion by Dot Connect Africa to obtain an injunction that saw the launch of the top level domain at the African Union Commission, in Addis Ababa. [19]

The final delegation of the .africa Top Level Domain went to Registry Africa Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the ZACR. [20] [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ICANN</span> American nonprofit organization that coordinates several Internet address databases

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization head-quartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces and numerical spaces of the Internet, ensuring the Internet's stable and secure operation. ICANN performs the actual technical maintenance work of the Central Internet Address pools and DNS root zone registries pursuant to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function contract. The contract regarding the IANA stewardship functions between ICANN and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce ended on October 1, 2016, formally transitioning the functions to the global multistakeholder community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Domain name</span> Identification string in the Internet

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As of December 2023, 359.8 million domain names had been registered. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internationalized domain name</span> Type of Internet domain name

An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics or ligatures. These writing systems are encoded by computers in multibyte Unicode. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System (DNS) as ASCII strings using Punycode transcription.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.xxx</span> Sponsored top-level Internet domain

.xxx is a sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) intended as a voluntary option for pornographic sites on the Internet. The sponsoring organization is the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR). The registry is operated by ICM Registry LLC. The ICANN Board voted to approve the sTLD on 18 March 2011. It went into operation on 15 April 2011.

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all two-letter top-level domains are ccTLDs.

Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of every fully qualified domain name. They are called generic for historical reasons; initially, they were contrasted with country-specific TLDs in RFC 920.

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) is the organization that manages the .ca country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. Its offices are located at 979 Bank Street in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. CIRA sets the policies and agendas that support Canada's internet community and Canada's involvement in international internet governance. It is a member-driven organization with membership open to all that hold a .ca domain. As of March 2023, there were more than 3.3 million active .ca domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.post</span> Sponsored top-level domain for the postal sector

.post is a sponsored top-level domain (STLD) available exclusively for the postal sector. It is secured by DNSSEC. The domain aims to integrate the physical, financial and electronic dimensions of postal services to enable and facilitate e-post, e-finance, e-commerce and e-government services. The domain was approved by ICANN on April 8, 2005 as a sponsored TLD in the second group of new TLD applications evaluated in 2004.

A sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) is one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet, alongside country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) and generic top-level domains (gTLD).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.web</span>

.web is a proposed top-level domain (TLD) that was created and assigned by an auction process to several bidding companies. It was awarded to Nu Dot Co LLC, which is primarily funded by Verisign.

A geographic top-level domain is any of an unofficial group of top-level domains in the Domain Name System of the Internet using the name of or invoking an association with a geographical, geopolitical, ethnic, linguistic or cultural community. The IANA does not recognize these domains as their own group within the Root Zone Database, rather classifying them as generic top-level domains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.shop</span>

.shop is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) launched in September 2016. Nine companies including Google, Amazon and Famous Four Media filed applications for .shop in the 2012 ICANN new gTLD application round. GMO Registry became the registry operator after prevailing in an ICANN public auction in January 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sophia Bekele</span> Ethiopian-American businesswoman

Sophia Bekele Eshete is an entrepreneur, corporate executive, governance and risk management specialist, policy advisor on ICT, commentator and philanthropist.

DotConnectAfrica Trust (DCA) is an independent non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in 2006. The organization was incorporated in Mauritius with its main charitable objectives to: (a) for the advancement of education in information technology to the African society and access to internet resources; and (b) in connection with (a) to provide the African society with a continental Internet domain name by sponsoring, establishing, and operating a new Top Level Domain (TLD) ".africa" for purposes of branding Africa on the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.wiki</span> Generic top-level Internet domain

.wiki is a top-level domain name. It was proposed in ICANN's New generic top-level domain (gTLD) Program, and became available to the general public on May 26, 2014. Top Level Design is the domain name registry for the string.

Registry Africa was created in 2017 to manage the .africa top-level domain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.kaufen</span>

.kaufen is a proposed top-level domain (TLD) in ICANN's New gTLD Program. The applicant is Demand Media. The proposed application succeeded and was delegated to the Root Zone on 29 December 2013.

.site is a generic top-level domain used in the Domain Name System of the internet. The domain was officially delegated to DotSite Inc on 12 March 2015. In 2000, years prior to its current ownership, the company Affilias LLC attempted to apply for ownership of the domain, along with .info and .web.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">.bank</span> Sponsored top-level domain

.bank is a sponsored top-level domain used in the Domain Name System of the internet. The TLD was officially delegated to fTLD Registry Services on behalf of the Financial Services Roundtable and American Bankers Association on January 5, 2015.

References

  1. 1 2 "Africa Gets Its Own Web Address with Launch of .africa". BBC. 10 March 2017.
  2. ↑ ".africa Domain Frequently Asked Questions". .africa - Registry Africa. 2020-05-16. Archived from the original on 2020-05-16. Retrieved 2020-05-16.
  3. ↑ ".africa Domain Name - One Continent. One Digital Identity". dotAfrica. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  4. ↑ ".africa gTLD now open to general public - ITWeb Africa". www.itwebafrica.com. Retrieved 2017-07-07.
  5. ↑ "Launch of dotAfrica | African Union". au.int. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  6. ↑ "FLOODGATES OPEN FOR AFRICA'S NEW DOMAIN". dotAfrica. 2017-07-04. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  7. ↑ Eweniyi, Olanrewaju (2017-07-07). "You Will Soon Be Able To Register Your Own DotAfrica Domain Name". Konbini. Archived from the original on 2019-08-19. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  8. ↑ "The Bright Continent Emerges As ABSA Champions dotAfrica". dotAfrica. 2018-07-12. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  9. ↑ bizcommunity (2018-11-02). "5 things Absa learnt when adopting the .africa domain". bizcommunity.
  10. ↑ "Bid for .Africa (Dot Africa) Passes Initial Evaluation | African Union". au.int. Archived from the original on 2020-11-06. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  11. ↑ "DotAfrica (.Africa) Roadshow launches at the African Union Headquarters | African Union". au.int. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  12. ↑ "African Regional Support". .africa - Registry Africa. Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  13. ↑ "Registry Agreement africa".
  14. ↑ "IANA — .africa Domain Delegation Data". www.iana.org. Retrieved 2019-09-26.
  15. ↑ "IANA — .africa Domain Delegation Data".
  16. 1 2 "About dotAfrica Top Level Domain". dotAfrica. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  17. ↑ ".africa Domain Name - One Continent. One Digital Identity". dotAfrica. Retrieved 2019-09-26.
  18. ↑ ".africa". Registry.Africa . Retrieved 2021-01-30.
  19. ↑ Sunday, Frankline. "Inside Kenya-SA fight to control .Africa domain". The Standard. Retrieved 2020-05-19.
  20. ↑ Ajao, Oluniyi D. (2017-02-27). ".africa will soon be open for business". TECH dot AFRICA. Retrieved 2020-05-19.

mafindi Africa


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.