The Dotafrrica sTLD registry will accept registrations in the second level (e.g. domain-name.africa) and the names will conform to standard DNS naming conventions Some names will be reserved in consultation with sponsoring ccTLDs and relevant parties. The Dotafrica sTLD registry will resolve .afrique as equivalent to .africa. Dotafrica will coordinate with ICANN to introduce multilingual TLDs in to .africa.

Registrants:

Only the following are permitted to register names in .africa:
a)Organization’s who provide an undertaking that their registered office or principal place of business is located in the African Union region.
b)Natural persons registered in AU c)Organizations established by the African Union.

The governance structure of the DotAfrica Organization is determined to address the varied needs of Africa and that includes consideration for geographic diversity, inclusion of public policy concerns and business development. The resulting structure separates names service operation from policy advisory. The organization will be constituted based on two types of membership organizations:

1. Sponsoring Members Sponsoring Members shall be organizations in the Pan Africa region as defined by ICANN Africa Region (based on the ICANN Region definitions) that manage and operate any of the country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) registries in the region. Other sponsoring Members shall be Pan-Africa Internet, Information Technology, Telecommunications, non-profit, NGO or other relevant community organizations in the African region.

2. Members African organizations with strong interest in the development of name space for Africa but do not have Pan-Africa scope in their operations. These organizations may be sub-regional or country focused.

The governance of the DotAfrica Organization will be the responsibility of a Board of Directors and will be advised by an Advisory Council. There will be eleven (9) persons in the proposed Board of Directors, which will be elected based on the following structure:

• 6 seats nominated and elected by Sponsoring Members
• 2 seats nominated and elected by Other Members
• 1 seat for the CEO of the DotAfrica registry

The geographic diversity requirement necessary for the multicultural and diverse African community will be satisfied with a requirement of one person be elected from one of the six sub-regions of AfriNIC/AfNOG i.e. north, south, east, west, central and Indian Ocean.

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Members of the Board are expected to act on behalf of the Dotafrica organization

An Advisory Council will advise the Board on policy matters. The Advisory Council’s membership will be based on the following criteria:

• A chairman is nominated by the chairperson of the African Union conference of ministers in consultation with the eAfrica Commission.
• 12 members, sponsoring or ordinary members elected by all members.
• Nominee(s) shall also not be a member of the Board of Directors.

In addition to the Board of Directors and the Advisory Council, the AfNOG steering committee will oversee the allocation of surplus proceeds from registry operations. The AfNOG steering committee will solicit, evaluate and recommend grants to relevant social and/or technical initiatives and activities from the surplus proceeds. The Board will ultimately authorize the grants.

A Registrant Constituency made up of registrants will be introduced by the Board and will be consulted on policy issues. Liaisons to the Board of Directors would be established.

Registry Operation

DotAfrica proposes to work with an African Registry operator and would interest African ICANN accredited registrars to resolve to become a technical Registry Operators for the dotAfrica name service. On the other hand an experienced Registry Operator or Registrar with experience in Africa to provide leading edge registry services would be an acceptable operator for dotAfrica should they agree to transfer operation to dotAfrica or its designate in an agreed period not exceeding 5 years.

Internet Solutions of South Africa is considered as first choice operator for dotAfrica.