Re: .africa gTLD

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

John Palmer wrote:

> 
> Again - we will contribute resources if someone wants to organize the
> administrative/policy part.

John Palmer has generously and repeatedly volunteered his contribution
to  setting up the .africa gTLD. As the originator of the proposition of
a gTLD for Africa, I appreciate his concrete offer and his empathy for
what he correctly termed the "overlooked sibling in the world of
continents."  
But, as we all know, networking is a cooperative effort; cooperation may
be by consensus or by unanimity (!!). I'm afraid that by looking at the
name service aspect alone, we may overlook the other components of the
puzzle: transmission, switching, routing, peering, etc. And end up in an
impasse. 

Bottom line: it's not enough to build the name servers for .africa gTLD.
Other crucial tasks must be undertaken simultaneously. Here are some of
them:

	- open connectivity in African countries and between them
	- telecomms policy liberalizing market opportunities for private ISPs 
	- allocating adequate spectrum to Africas ISPs
	- policy conducive to Internet penetration in the lower strata of
society
	- low cost and end-user sustainable computer networking  
	- training: technical, managerial
	- countrywide network
	- partnership for online content creation and publishing
..............................................

One example: I have a partnership agreement with CERESCOR, an
Oceanography and Marine biology research center in Guinea. Thirty-five
(35) PhDs work at the facility, which does not have even a phone or fax
line to downtown Conakry or to the outside world.  I plan to link the
Center to:
- a wireless MAN 
- international satellite link
- and/or to the public switched telephone network.

It would be easy to configure a Unix LAN with TCP/IP client-server
applications. Then what? How would these people communicate with
Internet users around the world if they are part of the core Internet?
Failure to exchange packets with the maximum number of hosts, routers,
urbi et orbi, would be a wasteful and self-defeating approach.
 
The African situation is that of a technologically lagging continent. I,
among others, want to organize an .africa gTLD, in all its aspects, not
only "the administrative/policy part", but also the technical content
publishing parts. To that end, the best way to reduce the gap is to open
ourselves to the broadest cooperation possible, not isolate, restrict or
hamper ourselves, in any way, shape or form.

I have tuned in the debate on this forum about rootservers, gTLDs, etc.
long enough to know that is needed for Africa is an end-to-end, not a
partial networking solution.  

I appreciate the offer. But I'll pass, at least for the time being...

Best regards.


- Tierno S. Bah
AfriQ*Access, Inc.