A Capital FM report from Nairobi says Africa stands to get its own Internet domain name, dot Africa, in the next 18 months.
This follows an intensive adjudication and evaluation process by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) involving over 500 applications from Registry Operators across the continent.
According to the report a final decision from ICANN, the international company responsible for the allocation of IP addresses and management of the systems, is expected in the first quarter of 2013.
Officials from Kenya’s Ministry of Information say the name will help to market African investors globally.
The report quotes Alice Munyua, Kenya Internet Governance Steering Committee chair at the Ministry of Information.
“Dot Africa is a top level domain name, similar to what we have here in Kenya, dot ke; like the way we use gmail.com, yahoo.co.uk and so on. So this is going to be a very new top level domain name that identifies Africa as a whole region,” said Munyua.
Staff Writer
good..