I am writing on the history of .africa and there seems to be conflicting information on when the initial expression of running of .africa was made. Was there an actual application to ICANN or not? <br clear="all"><div><br>
</div><div>If you have a recollection of the events then, please help me out. </div><div><br></div><div>I have drafted the brief history and if there is another part of it that I am getting wrong, please correct me.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Here it is....</div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">History of dot Africa</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">At the beginning of the second round of the new Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) application in 2000, an entrepreneur from a western country had the idea of running dot Africa. </p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">The entrepreneur approached Nii Quaynor and Pierre Danjinou, Africa's well known technology ambassadors to organize support for the redelegation and operation of the geographic domain. </p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">By the time ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) held its first meeting in Africa in Accra in 2002, the idea of redelegation of dot Africa was floated to other experts and the feeling was that at that time, Africa had other more challenging problems like redelegation of country code Top Level Domains, connectivity infrastructure issues, and policy development among other challenges.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">It was largely agreed that the best approach was to tackle the elementary problems such as connectivity and redelegation of ccTLDs before dealing with dot Africa, but the debate continued.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">Some of the elementary problems were: connecting the Eastern Africa region with the fiber optic cable to reduce its reliance on satellite connectivity, increasing the number of fiber optic cables in west Africa to further reduce connectivity costs, boosting network infrastructure to interconnect different countries and exchange content locally and developing registry operations to support growth of country code Top Level Domains, among other challenges.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">The policy and infrastructure discussions started an investment wave that saw several investors coming together to initiate several fiber optic cables in such-EASSY, TEAMS, and SEACOM among others. These investment vehicles were both private and public-private partnerships.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">By 2006, it was clear that the connectivity hurdle was going to be cleared and the debate focused back to dot Africa. In the meantime, European countries had rallied behind dot EU and Asian countries were galvanizing support for dot Asia.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">In Africa, the debate was centered around the shape and form of dot Africa organization, and the role governments and private sector would play in promoting dot Africa, and how the organization would contribute to training and infrastructure development.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">Between 2007 and 2008, a private sector initiative emerged, promising to run dot Africa with the support of the African Union but it was marred by controversy because the African Union Commission only expressed its intention to rally African countries behind dot Africa in 2009 and in 2010, Africa TLD organization (AfTLD) which brings together ccTLDs in the region, rendered its support to the AUC in sponsoring and selecting the right organization to run dot Africa TLD.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">In 2011, the AU invited interested companies based in Africa to express interest in running dot Africa, clearly showing their registry operational experience, stating where the registry operations will be based, how the operation will benefit African countries and a methodology of how these benefits will trickle down.</p>
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<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222">After deliberations on the technical, financial ability and benefits to Africa tech community, UNIFORUM was selected by the AUC as the organization to establish and run dot Africa.</p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;text-align:justify;font:13.0px Arial;color:#222222;min-height:15.0px"> </p></div><div><br></div>-- <br>Best regards,<br><br>Becky<br><br>254 720318925<br><br><a href="http://www.wanjiku.co.ke">www.wanjiku.co.ke</a><br>
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