The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the African Network Information Centre`s (AfriNIC`s) application to become the fifth regional Internet registry.
The announcement was made at the 22nd ICANN international conference held in Argentina last week. The meeting voted to give full recognition to AfriNIC as the fifth regional Internet registry, dedicated to the allocation of numbering resources for the Africa and Indian Ocean region.
AfriNIC submitted its application for recognition as the official regional Internet number registry in August last year, and was granted provisional recognition by the ICANN board the following month. The three registries previously serving the region - APNIC, ARIN and RIPE NCC - transferred all services to AfriNIC in February.
ICANN president and CEO Paul Twomey said during a visit to SA late last year that ICANN wanted African input on identifying "appropriate modes and locations on the African continent for an ICANN regional presence". He said an African office would be ICANN`s first regional presence in the developing world and only the second outside North America.
In his official statement on the approval, AfriNIC CEO Adiel Akpologan said: "This is very rewarding news for Africa and the Internet community at large. It is a starting point for more participation by Africa in the global Internet technical co-operation system. It is also a positive step for the continent towards the management of the Internet. Having their own registry is proof that Africans want to look seriously into the evolution of the Internet."
He noted that the project was initiated by African network operators and supported by the governments of SA, Mauritius and Egypt. SA funds the operations centre in Pretoria, Mauritius hosts the AfriNIC headquarters in the newly built Cyber Tower, and Egypt funds the disaster recovery centre.
New top-level domains
ICANN also approved two new sponsored top-level domains - .jobs and .travel.
The new registry operators, Tralliance and Employ Media, concluded an independent evaluation and contract negotiation process, which was outlined in an ICANN request that solicited proposals for new registries.
ICANN has entered into commercial and technical negotiations with other sponsored top-level domains: .cat, .post and .mobi, while board and staff members are evaluating the additional proposed domains: .asia, .mail, .tel and .xxx.
During the conference, ICANN also conducted a series of workshops on DNS security, domain name hijacking, the World Summit on Information Society, and co-ordinated further discussions on internationalised domain name implementation.
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ICANN plans African presence
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