The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said the yearly Domain Name System industry roughly equates to $17.5 million in value for African country code top-level domains domain names alone based on local rates.
ICANN, in a study made available to The Guardian, said most of the ccTLDs are available for registration by offshore entities without the requirement for a local presence, saying in 16 countries there is a requirement for some form of local legal presence to register a domain name: Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia and Zambia.
“This suggests significant growth opportunities for local providers in individual countries – noting that 91 per cent of the registrants that responded to the online survey said they preferred to deal with local registrars,” it stated. MEANWHILE, the ICANN study showed that Nigeria moved up to second place in the Africa Domain Name Industry, even as African ccTLD showed 4.33 million registrations as of November 2023 and an additional 1.4 million generic top-level domain registrations from African entities.
On infrastructure, the report indicates over 1.1 million kilometres of terrestrial and submarine fiber cables interconnect the continent, enhancing cross-border communications and internet access, and a significant concentration of web content and domain hosting remains within only a few countries, underscoring the need for more localised Internet service.
Speaking on the report, ICANN’s Interim President and CEO, Sally Costerton, said that the report sheds light on the growth, challenges, and opportunities within the Domain Name System across Africa.