[Comments-africa-regional-plan-fy21-25-15apr20] ICANN Africa Regional Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025

[secretariat at aftld.org]

PUBLIC COMMENT AFRICA TOP LEVEL DOMAINS ORGANIZATION

AFTLD welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the ICANN Africa
Regional Plan for fiscal years 2021 - 2025.

We acknowledge and appreciate collaborative efforts and support from the
global stakeholder engagement team that has resulted in significant
improvement of the Domain Name industry in Africa. More than 95 % of
African ccTLD registries are completely automated and are currently
focused on becoming sustainable entities as they grow local domain name
system markets. Furthermore, a study conducted by AFNIC the French ccTLD
in 2019 indicated that the Africa Region indicated the highest growth in
registrations despite the small zone size of the ccTLDs, a testament of
the fruits of the collaborative efforts. Africa ranks third regionally in
terms of ccNSO membership with an increasing number of ccTLDs joining the
ccNSO to learn best practices from developed ccTLD with the primary
objectives of being on par with global best practices.

Specifically we are grateful for the support and collaboration that has
seen the African ccTLDs build  their capacity in the following areas:

Technical (Implementation of the Domain Name Security Extension System
-(DNSSEC)
Partnership  in the planning and organization of the Africa Domain Name
System Forum from 2013 -  2020
Support in registrar  and reseller development.
Support in research (Africa Market Study, ongoing efforts to develop a DNS
observatory)

We call upon ICANN to consider the following issues as it implements in
Regional Strategy for financial years 2021 - 2025

Dedicate more financial resources to the global stakeholder engagement
team in Africa for supporting ccTLD development in the region particularly
in capacity building.
Dedicate more financial resources to the global stakeholder engagement
team for stakeholder engagement to support our efforts as the regional
organization in encouraging governments to embrace best practices in
management of ccTLD and new TLDs in general with an emphasis on public
private partnership based models for ccTLD and 3 R (Registry, Registrar
Registrant models) for new TLDs
Strengthen the capacity of the Nairobi hub to engage key stakeholders
drawn from government, private sector, technical community and academia
across the African continent on the role of ICANN and the Domain Name
System for Social and Economic development..
Thank you for your consideration

secretariat at aftld.org

www.aftld.org
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