Government eyes .africa domain name

Johannesburg, 20 Nov 2000

The department of communications has called for support in its bid to claim the Southafrica.com domain name from its American owners, and also lauded the group that effectively prevented the .africa top level domain name to be assigned.

"It wouldn`t be appropriate that people register .africa without any entity from Africa involved in it," said the department`s director-general Andile Ngcaba at today`s Johannesburg launch of the Green Paper on e-commerce.

If assigned, he said, the domain "would have cost us millions of dollars or rands," as he believes the future of e-commerce is based on such domains.

The bid for .africa by Rathbawn Computers was blocked by an informal African group at the recent Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting.

Alan Levin, a director of the non-profit Cape IT Initiative (CITI), who attended the meeting after his trip was sponsored by IT billionaire Mark Shuttleworth, says African delegates were unanimous in their decision to oppose the application.

"Firstly we feel that no geographic TLD [top level domain] should be delegated without involving people from that region, and secondly we didn`t believe that Africa was ready for such a TLD. There is a lot of development still to come here."

The dozen African delegates, representing at least 10 countries, drafted a motivation for opposing the application, which Levin says was widely accepted by the ICANN board and various committees. "I think it is highly unlikely that the TLD will be presented now," he says.

Ngcaba praised the delegation for lobbying ICANN, and agreed that Africans must own the .africa name.

"We must establish an enterprise that will manage .africa for the continent," he said. "Domain names are the key to the success of electronic commerce."

Levin says the objection also makes it nearly impossible for the South African government to take control of the domain if it should be issued. "To obtain the domain you would now need wide consensus from other countries."

The department is also garnering support for its battle for ownership of the Southafrica.com domain, which is owned by the American Virtual Countries. It has launched a campaign to gather supporting e-mail from individuals, and also called on business to make its voice heard in the matter.

Black business council president Hasmukh Gajjar expressed his organisation`s support at the green paper launch.

"This name rightfully belongs to the people of SA," he said, reading from a letter to the department. "It is outrageous that this national asset is in the hands of individuals who have managed to cyber-squat."

Minister of communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri was asked how much the government would be willing to pay for the domain, to settle the dispute.

"I don`t see why I should pay for what is ours," she responded, to applause from the audience.