Re: .africa gTLD

[Dr Nii Narku Quaynor <quaynor@ncs.com.gh>]

Please, the .africa will not make any real difference in getting the
actual job done. Some of us are doing it right there NOT shuttling.



Tierno S. Bah wrote:
> 
> 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.