Re: .africa gTLD

["Tierno S. Bah" <tsbah@afriq.net>]

Philip J. Nesser II wrote:

> 
> I don't see a significant advantage to having top level geographical names
> above the standard two letter iso country codes.  

I do. This idea was first twisted around on this list after someone
proposed creation of gTLDs reflecting the ITU regions. Reactions were
mixed. Some folks were so far as to compare geography-based gTLDs to
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION (sic). I found that analogy far-fetch since it was
a hasty and odd injection of U.S. socio-political rhetoric into a very
different debate. However, I don't think that .latin should be
automatically mapped to a geographical area. It points primarily to
european and american ethnolinguistic and culture area(s) vs.
anglo-saxon or slavic ones, for instance. Keep in mind that the Latins
in Central, South America and in the Caribbean share territory and
borders with sizeable English, Dutch, etc. speaking communities.
Therefore, a .latin TLD, for all its real significance and relevance,
would not be as generic as, say, .africa.

> Can you please explain your rational behind the more "vibrant" Internet use in Africa if > there were a .africa gtld.


I shuttle back and forth often between the United States and Africa.
At each occasion I am reminded of the opportunities and pitfalls that
the Internet represents for the continent. The Internet could be a
great opportunity if African states had built a positive track record
at the helm of their respective countries for more than three decades.
Unfortunately that's not the case. Take telecommunications, for
instance. Comforted by their monopoly, African PSTNs have slept on the
wheel, altogether, and failed to achieve even 1% telephone
penetration. The average teledensity for the continent is 0.95%.
Contrast that reality with predictions that a country or a region
should have 10% telephone penetration in order to take part in the
global communication/information-based economy of the 21st century.
Within three years, the 21st century will dawn upon us. It would take
a miracle for Africa to reach even 2% telephone density in such a
short period of time. African states have legitimate control over ISO
country domain names. But they lack (or have deprived themselves) the
digital infrastructure required to translate those domains into
effective virtual spaces for economic, education, health and cultural
development. If States are allowed to be both the regulators and the
providers of Internet services in Africa, without competitive
challenge from the African private sector, I am afraid Africa may miss
the Internet opportunity. Instead, the Internet will suffer in Africa
the same fate that previous watersheld encountered on the continent.
They were engineered from within or borrowed from without. However,
they ultimately failed to spread or trickle down to productive
communities and entrepreneurs; they remained atop, as the exclusive
privilege of the ruling elite. They ultimately withered and 'died'.
The Internet community owes it to itself to encourage the
diversification of Internet network building and service (access,
connectivity, content) provision in Africa. It's one way of
balancing the roles between government regulation and a budding private
operation. Therefore, I am reiterating my proposition for the creation
of a privately managed .africa gTLD as a shared registry.  


- Tierno Bah
AfriQ*Access, Inc.