[AfrICANN-discuss] Africa: Less Than 1 Million Country Domain Sites, says new survey

[Anne-Rachel Inné]

Africa: Less Than 1 Million Country Domain Sites, says new survey

A country domain is an Internet 'top level' code assigned to a country, for
example .za (South Africa), .uk (United Kingdom), .de (Germany), .fr
(France) and .zw (Zimbabwe). ZADNA is the Department of
Communications-funded agency in charge of managing SA's internet .za space.

The .ZADNA report also found that most South African businesses and people
(83%) prefer to use .za ahead of .com (15%). However, more than half of
Africa's one million country domain websites registrations are in South
Africa, according to the survey, which means 535,711.za domains are
registered, 16,000 (3%of all South African sites) of which are .org.zawebsites.

"These 535,711 are what we call active websites because we do delete a
couple of websites each month due to non-renewal," Mpisane said. There are
roughly 90,000 (17%) websites  registered in South Africa under the .com
domain.

Mpisane said: "The research results are very important as they provide
answers to most of the questions we and our stakeholders had about improving
the .za space. These answers clarify what interventions .ZADNA or its
stakeholders need to make to improve our Internet space."

Registering one .za website costs about R50, and a .com website costs
roughly US$7.
"When someone registers a country domain (.za) website, the money stays in
SA, while a .com website registration fee leaves the country," Mpisane said,
pleading with South Africans to register country domain websites to support
the .za space.

Furthermore, most businesses interviewed (58%) prefer registering their
products and brand names across multiple domain names to counter the
ever-increasing instances of trademark abuse, Mpisane revealed.

Internet name-tampering ('squatting') has become a new trend and a lucrative
business in the current Internet space, where the number of registered
websites worldwide now stands at 192 million, 85 million of which are .com
websites. Mpisane advised businesses to check time and time again with their
ISPs if their domain name has been tampered with.
(Source: Biz-Community)
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