Africa Domain Name System Forum to be held in Durban, July 2013

BY EDMUND SMITH-ASANTE

Dubbed the Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum, the Internet Society, African Top Level Domain (AfTLD) and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), are organising a conference for registries, registrars, experts and policy makers to foster cross-border collaboration.

The event, which comes off from July 12, 2013 to July 13, 2013 in Durban, South Africa, aims to establish a platform for the DNS community across Africa and to advance the domain name industry and domain name registrations on the African continent.

According to the three organisers, the upcoming forum has been necessitated by the fact that despite the support offered over the years for the continued development and growth of Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) in Africa through capacity building and technical support, the growth and sustainability of African ccTLDs and adoption of new technologies remain very low as compared to other regions of the world.

It is to identify the bottlenecks that are keeping the industry from growing and the actions that can catalyze its growth, that the three organisations determined the need for a forum to discuss these regional DNS issues, they stated in a press release announcing the forum.

The organisers also hope that the DNS Forum will foster cross-border collaboration between registries, registrars, registrants, DNS experts, Government representatives, and policy makers.

Commenting on the July conference, Dawit Bekele, Internet Society Regional Bureau Director for Africa said: “The Internet Society’s African Regional Bureau has been working to strengthen the ccTLDs in Africa by improving sustainability, encouraging the implementation of automation solutions at ccTLDs, and promoting the use of technology such as DNSSEC at registries.”

“We are pleased to join together with AfTLD and ICANN to host this multi-stakeholder forum where participants can share experiences, gain new insights, and establish new business relationships with organisations from within and outside the continent. Such a forum is important to bring growth in the African domain name industry,” he added.

Pierre S. Dandjinou, ICANN Vice President of Stakeholder Engagement for Africa, also stated: “ICANN is partnering with other players in the region to implement its Africa strategy, which was developed in 2012 by the African community. Thus, this DNS Forum in Durban, as a partnership between AfTLD and the Internet Society and as a pre-conference event to the ICANN meeting, is another milestone that builds on the MIGworks event in Addis in March 2013, which sought to pave the way for the development of the DNS industry in Africa and to empower the African community for an increased accreditation of registrars from the continent.”

“I believe the new gTLD [Generic Top-Level Domain] programme will help grow this industry on a global and regional level, and we hope that African business players can be part of this growing industry as much as they can. ICANN will present in this event several programmes to support and incubate new business players in Africa to benefit out of the growing potential in this continent,” he stated further.

For his part, Dr. Paulos Nyirenda, President of AfTLD said, “By working with and building on our partnerships in running the DNS Forum, AfTLD’s objective is to build on our thriving capacity building activities for ccTLDs in Africa so as to improve the DNS in Africa and the sustainability of ccTLDs.” 

“The DNS Forum will present a great opportunity for players in the domain industry to learn and to foster new and established relationships, including those among ccTLDs, registries, registrars, operators, policy makers and end users,” the AfTLD president expressed optimistically.

Topics to be covered during the two-day event include trends, opportunities, and challenges of the DNS industry; strategies for registries and registrars; legal issues with cross-border domain registrations; ways Governments can support domain name growth; and benefits of standardising accreditation to attract more cross-border registrars and registrations.