<div dir="ltr">McTim,<div><br></div><div>This is exactly the problem. You have to focus on the situation within national boundaries. I have been involved with post apartheid development in Nambia for well over 20 years. No matter what the area (SME development, livestock and agriculture, tourism, etc.) the need to build local and national supporting infrascructures is paramount. Without that focus you never get to where you can engage effectively with foreign businesses or any kind of supranational agency.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The discussions in ICANN and on this list coalesce around the need for more ICANN Accredited registrars in Africa. Thats a nice goal, but only part of the story. What if most or all of these registrars are based in East or West Africa? How will people in Namibia access these registrars? If they have a credit card they can, but that's a small number of people in our economy. Namibia is a member of the Common Monetary Area which still has exchange controls making bank transfers outside the CMA very complicated. Writing a cheque in your local currency and sending through the post is not an option because banks in other countries often want cheques in USD, EUR, etc. While the elites of any society will have few problems getting to access to Internet services and infrastructures, what about the rest the people living in African societies? I am sure that this group makes up the vast majority of any population. </div>
<div><br></div><div>The advantage of nationally based registrars is that they take care of these transactions for clients as well as providing the many different services that people new to the Internet require. They speak local languages, they provide service and support. Bob Ochieng started this thread with a post about "ubiquitous, secure and sustainable ICT infrastructure." The panel was also about "smart infrastructure." Building infrastructure from the bottom up (to borrow a well known ICANN term) is smart. This process needs to occur in conjunction with the seemingly top down approach of creating of 25 (the number I have heard as a target) ICANN accredited registrars for Africa. (Which comes out to less than half a registrar per country.)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Neither ICANN nor this list wants to get into the different ways in which businesses are created, regulated, taxed, etc in different countries; places like the World Bank, AfDB, GIZ, and others do a much better job. ICANN and people on this list can start thinking about how promote national registrars within what I take to be the ambit of ICANN and Africann -- DNS, stability and security. For example, the meeting referred to by Bob talked about security. How do we convince ccTLDs and African ISPs to adopt DNSSEC? There are other questions to look at.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Ben</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div class=""><div class="h5"><br>
> On Nov 7, 2013, at 21:52, McTim <<a href="mailto:dogwallah@gmail.com">dogwallah@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
>> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Ben Fuller <<a href="mailto:abutiben@gmail.com">abutiben@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>> It seems no one is interested in the issue of building up national registrars.<br>
><br>
> I am all for building up African registrars, but I see no need to<br>
> focus inside nation states boundaries.<br>
><br>
> --<br>
> Cheers,<br>
><br>
> McTim<br>
> "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A<br>
> route indicates how we get there." Jon Postel<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>**********************************************<br>Dr. Ben Fuller <br><a href="mailto:abutiben@gmail.com" target="_blank">abutiben@gmail.com</a><br>
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