The Republic of Namibia has become the 40th African country to formally endorse the ZA Central Registry (ZACR) bid for the rights to administer the proposed .africa generic Top Level Domain (gTLD).
Namibia’s formal Letter of Support was prepared by the Office of The Permanent Secretary in the country’s Ministry of Information and Communication Technology following the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ICT Ministers Meeting held in Mauritius in early November 2012.
Decision 20 taken at the ICT Ministers Meeting urged SADC member states that had not yet submitted their Letters of Support for the ZACR bid to do so.
According to ZACR Africa Liaison, Koffi Fabrice Djossou: “Some 75% of African countries have now endorsed the ZACR bid for .africa, well above the ICANN requirement of 60% support needed. In addition, the ZACR bid is endorsed by the African Union Commission (AUC)”.
“The ICT Ministers Meeting was sufficiently satisfied that the ZACR, the most diverse bidding entity, has the required technical, administrative and financial know-how to make a success of Africa’s proposed new home on the Web,” added Mr Djossou.
The background to the bid for .africa is that the AUC, with the assistance of an expert task team, issued an open tender in order to select the best entity to apply to ICANN to establish a world-class domain name registry operation for the .africa TLD.
Following the evaluation and due diligence process, UniForum SA (now known as the ZA Central Registry) was appointed by the African Union to apply for and administer .africa, for the benefit of the African Internet community.
