2024 Highlights: Advancing Africa’s Future With the Coalition for Digital Africa

As we start 2025, we reflect on a year behind us of significant progress and impactful initiatives that have brought us closer to our goal of expanding and strengthening the Internet across Africa.

The Coalition for Digital Africa has made remarkable strides in 2024. Below are some of our key accomplishments resulting from the initiatives we have collaboratively undertaken with our Coalition partners:

Domain Name System (DNS) Infrastructure

• The Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) Roadshows initiative supported six African country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries. The Burkina Faso, Botswana, Cameroon, Cape Verde, and Nigeria ccTLDs received training and technical support. In Botswana, the ccTLD registry, managed by the Botswana Communications Regulatory Authority (BOCRA), successfully reactivated their DNSSEC setup by signing the .bw ccTLD again in May 2024, securing its zone after being unsigned for nearly two years. The preliminary assessment has been completed for Sudan’s ccTLD, which will be followed by technical training to sign their zone.
  
  
• In collaboration with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Coalition successfully enhanced the service level agreement monitoring (SLAM) system in the region. Improvements have enabled African probe nodes to meticulously monitor both IPv4 and IPv6 transport for the Registration Data Directory Service and DNS services provided by top-level domain registry operators. To increase the SLAM system's geographical coverage and monitoring capacity, the probe node that was previously located in Cairo has been relocated to Nairobi, Kenya.
  
  
• The Coalition continued to support Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) across Africa to expand connectivity and ensure safe, reliable, and affordable Internet access. In 2024, the Internet Society, one of the Coalition's partners, awarded grants to Benin, Rwanda, Malawi, and Madagascar. Rwanda concluded the training phase, and the IXP support implementation phase is in its final stage. Malawi and Benin hosted roadshows and are continuing their IXP deployment in each country. Lastly, Madagascar is in the early implementation phase as of December 2024.
  
  

Meaningful Connectivity

• The Coalition continued to promote Universal Acceptance (UA) in the region. The Association for African Universities and ICANN held two webinars on integrating UA concepts into computer science curricula, which drew 249 participants for the English session and 34 for the French session. Following this, 20 institutions expressed interest in piloting the UA curriculum, with three shortlisted for piloting the work.
• The project team tested UA compatibility on WordPress-based university websites, assisting 23 higher education institutions in one-on-one sessions to implement recommended updates. ICANN has since shared guidelines for universities to make their WordPress sites UA-ready. The project team is also using this testing to submit updates to WordPress code to support UA. It is important to note that WordPress updates supporting UA, as tested in this project, could benefit many WordPress users globally. As of 2024, there are about 835 million websites using WordPress out of the 1.98 billion websites on the Internet.

Capacity Development

• The 2023 African Domain Name Industry Study was published in May 2024. Commissioned by ICANN and conducted by PowerSoft Africa, the study helps assess the current conditions of the African DNS landscape and identify potential avenues for growth and development. See our blog series contextualizing and expanding upon data and information gathered during the study.
• The Coalition launched the Internet Governance Capacity Development for Governments and Lawmakers initiative. Through tailored capacity development and engagement programs, government representatives and parliamentarians deepened their understanding of the Internet’s technical functions, including the DNS.
• In collaboration with the African Parliamentary Network on Internet Governance (APNIG), the Coalition conducted an in-person workshop for 23 parliamentarians from 15 APNIG country members in June 2024. The APNIG delegation also attended the ICANN High-Level Governmental Meeting hosted by the Rwandan Minister of ICT and Innovation in June prior to ICANN80 in Kigali, Rwanda.
• At ICANN81 in Istanbul, Republic of Türkiye, government officials from 13 African countries participated in a tailored workshop jointly organized by Smart Africa, the World Bank, the European Commission, and ICANN.
• A Coalition initiative focused on capacity development for ccTLDs in Africa concluded successfully in October. This initiative provided training and mentoring to nine ccTLDs to empower ccTLD operators, enhance their operational efficiency on technical, marketing and business strategy development, and encourage continuous collaboration among stakeholders in the African region. We recognize and sincerely appreciate the valuable contributions of our partners in this initiative: the African Top Level Domains Organization, the Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération, and the Network Startup Resource Center and the International Telecommunication Union.
  
  

 The Way Forward

As we look to 2025 and beyond, the Coalition remains committed to promoting innovation and encouraging entrepreneurial efforts aimed at strengthening Internet infrastructure to support the development of Africa’s digital economy. By working together, we will continue to maximize the benefits of each initiative, creating an Internet ecosystem that is useful and empowering for people across Africa.