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NiRA explains fewer ICANN accredited registrars for Nigeria

By Peter Oluka
04 August 2017   |   3:40 am
According to Folayan, NIRA’s interest is in popularizing the Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) .ng domain and not the generic domains like .com which is the purview of ICANN accredited Registrars.

Sunday Folayan, President NiRA

Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has explained why the country accounts for fewer domain name registrars accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN inferred in its First Report on Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Market, in total, there are only 11 ICANN accredited registrars in the region- four in South Africa, two in Morocco and one each in Burundi, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia out of a global total of 2,143.

The report which includes 54 countries shows there are, as of May 2017, some 5.1 million domain names associated with Africa. The total annual value of the African Domain Name market is some $52 million.

Reacting to the report, Sunday Folayan, NiRA President, who recently attended ICANN Meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa where the report was presented, in an email to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek wrote,”Yes,…at the meeting where the report was presented, indeed, I took to the microphone to give some insights, based on the contents of the report.

He said that Nigeria has two not one ICANN accredited registrars; however, they sell generic Domains, whereas Nigerian registrars are primarily concerned with the growth of .ng brand.

According to Folayan, NIRA’s interest is in popularizing the Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) .ng domain and not the generic domains like .com which is the purview of ICANN accredited Registrars.

Presently, NIRA has over 60 Accredited Registrars selling .ng domains and has developed programmes to speed up .ng domain (brand) growth.

“It is in NIRA’s interest to sell more .ng domains names, and not gTLD domains, hence more ICANN accredited Registrars will obviously give those registrars more reasons not to register .ng domain names, a strategy that conflicts with our ccTLD agenda.

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