ICANN regional meeting, Addis Ababa
The recent ICANN Regional meeting in Addis Ababa welcomed the first working draft of the ICANN Africa Strategy.
In August 2012
ICANN announced a new approach to Africa:
http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-01aug12-en.htm
This new approach encompasses the development of a framework for
ICANN’s Africa strategy and the announcement of the initial plan in October 2013. It allows for a
stronger African presence and participation in ICANN.
Africa is one of
five ICANN regions. Africans have been active members of the different constituencies since 1998. Our continent is an
emerging Internet economy with the
fastest growing networks but its participation in ICANN is not reflected in the
low number of African Registries and
new gTLD applications.
At the ICANN meeting in Prague, the incoming CEO of ICANN requested African participants to assist in developing a
3-year strategic plan with clear goals for Africa. The group formed a
working group to lead the African community in developing the strategic plan.
At the recent meeting, the agreed deliverables and the work of the past few months were shared with the community. The deliverables demonstrated the
commitment by Africans to increase ICANN activities in Africa, by addressing the needs for an African presence in ICANN itself.
A project methodology was developed to address the development of this Africa strategy. The methodology included:
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formation of constituencies to deal with certain issues
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literature reviews on the Internet in Africa and ICANN
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more effective engagement with emerging trends and issues
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collaboration and collation of the findings from the different constituencies
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public consultation regarding the results and findings
The
draft strategy to be presented to ICANN will utilise all the information gathered through the public consultation process. The public input sought to
identify African needs, the benefits to ICANN, an African SWOT analysis of ICANN, as well as views on creating an African presence at ICANN.
The Africa strategy, as it stands now, is aligned to the four key focus areas within the broader ICANN Strategic Plan 2012 – 2015:
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DNS stability and security
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Competition, consumer trust and consumer choice
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Core operations, including IANA
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Healthy governance ecosystems
A fifth focus area has been added:
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Stakeholder and business development, incubation and partnering
The African strategy has
set further specific African goals within the broader ICANN strategy. Different projects will be established to address these objectives. Certain objectives are critical within the first year of this
3-year strategic plan, and all objectives will have to be met within the 3-year period.
To find out more on the ICANN Africa Strategy Project, please visit:
http://www.africanncommunity.org/index.php/aswg
Features: new africainonespace.org website
It is with great pleasure and excitement that the dotAfrica team announces its new, fresh and revamped africainonespace.org website. We have embraced the spirit of innovation we recognise in Africa.
With more pleasing aesthetics and the key focus on
content development, the new website aims to create a
unique body of knowledge for a range of Internet stakeholders. The website portal harmonises with one of the key benefits of the .africa TLD : “creating unique African content”.
We have created unique spaces on the site for different Internet stakeholders, from the individual
site visitor, to the Registrar, the
Intellectual Property/branding community, to
Governments. You name it: we have it!
We have also created space for the policies which will drive the
operations of the new .africa TLD, as well as any
new campaigns. We believe this is the epitome of a good-looking, content-driven, online space.
Look out especially for our
dotAfrica Pioneer Campaign!
To experience the all-new Africa-in-one-space visit
http://africainonespace.org/
Features: personality of the week
The dotAfrica team will be participating at the following events. Be sure to keep a look out for us.
The ‘Introduction to DNS’ course was conducted in Midrand, next door to the ZACR offices. It ran for three days from 11 February and was attended by 16 students.
The Advanced course was conducted in Bellville, Cape Town, at the Autumn Leaf training facilities. This four-day course ran from 18 February. Ten students were taught the skills to implement and manage DNSSEC (Domain Name Security) using a variety of tools such as OpenDNSSEC.
