DotAfrica Partners with AfriNIC to Drive Training & Policy

UniForum SA, the organisation selected by the African Union to run the DotAfrica Top Level Domain registry has partnered with AfriNIC to support training and policy discussions within Africa’s tech community.

Under the partnership, the DotAfrica project will sponsor four AfriNIC meetings, allowing more people to participate in technical training and policy discussions. AfriNIC is the regional Internet registry tasked with the allocation of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses.

During AfriNIC meetings, public and private sector officials discuss policy issues that affect Internet growth and accessibility, as well as ways to collaborate on cyber security and how to promote the deployment of new technology, including Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Globally, IPv4 addresses have been exhausted but in Africa, IPv4 addresses could still be available for the next two to three years.

For the technical community, AfriNIC offers training on cyber security, IPv4 exhaustion, IPv6 deployment, Internet Protocol and mobility, policy and IP address allocation, and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC), among other topics.

“Our partnership with AfriNIC demonstrates DotAfrica’s commitment to policy and training development in Africa. AfriNIC interfaces with the Africa Network Operators Group (AfNOG) and Africa Top Level Domain organisation (AfTLD). This is vital for growth in the policy and technical community,” said Mohamed Bashir, DotAfrica steering committee chair.

“The sponsorship demonstrates DotAfrica’s commitment to supporting the Internet ecosystem in the region and partly supports our mission to promote a multi-stakeholder bottom-up policy process. The community will benefit from this kind of sponsorship by attending and participating in our meetings,” said Adiel Akplogan, AfriNIC CEO.

“At AfriNIC meetings, there are discussions and consensus building on regional and global policies related to Internet resource management and the support will go a long way in enhancing these meetings. In addition, those who would have not been able to attend the meetings in person are now able to participate,” said Michuki Mwangi, CTO at Kenya Internet Exchange Point and a trainer at AfNOG.

UniForum is the registry manager for .co.za (South Africa) and as regards the DotAfrica project, it has submitted a bid as the ZA Central Registry. The bids for the new generic TLDs have been submitted to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and bidders will be revealed on June 13, 2012.