DOT-Africa gets registered as a domain.

In 2014 the ZA Central Registry undertook a journey to register the DOT-Africa global Top Level Domain (gTLD) with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ICANN. The bid to register and control the DOT-Africa gTLD was also contested by DotConnectAfrica (DCA), an entity registered in Kenya.

ICANN awarded the rights to operate the DOT-Africa gTLD to ZA Central Registry in 2015. However, following ICANN’s decision and announcement DCA launched a motion to challenge the decision. The challenge took the whole of 2015 and 2016. In December 2016 DCA’s first Motion for Preliminary Injunction was denied by a California Superior Court.

On 9 February 2017, ICANN announced that a California Superior Court has denied DCA’s second Motion for Preliminary Injunction to stop the delegation of the DOT-AFRICA gTLD to ZA Central Registry. Soon afterwards on 15 February 2017, the DOT-Africa gTLD went live for the first time. This spelt out a new dawn for the continent of Africa and her people.

In this edition of the Tech Report, we talk about the DOT-Africa gTLD with the CEO of ZA Central Registry, Mr Lucky Masilela, who take us on a journey on how they got here with the team.