Coalition for Digital Africa to Launch Study of Continent’s DNS Landscape

The Coalition for Digital Africa is conducting an in-depth study of the African Domain Name System (DNS) landscape aimed at creating a comprehensive picture of the industry.

The research will leverage the methodology and results of the 2016 Africa DNS Study to examine the current realities of the DNS landscape and present an updated report. The study, which got underway on 12 December 2022, will serve as the foundation for an observatory—a platform and software—that will continuously monitor the growth, development, and emerging needs of the DNS industry in Africa.

Understanding the strengths and weaknesses in Africa's DNS ecosystem will help researchers develop recommendations on how to advance the industry to realize its full potential. The study also will document relevant data and provide analytical findings to enable ICANN and other participants in the Africa DNS industry to build a roadmap for the development of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) and generic top-level domains (gTLDs) in Africa.

The study, commissioned by ICANN and conducted by PowerSoft Africa, is the fifth major initiative to be deployed under the auspices of the Coalition for Digital Africa. All of the projects are aimed at expanding the Internet infrastructure in Africa. They include the installation of two ICANN-Managed Root Server clusters (IMRS), which will add crucial capacity to support the anticipated growth in Internet use across the continent, as well as capacity development for 10 country code top-level domains and efforts aimed at enabling people to access the Internet using their own languages and scripts.

Conceived by ICANN, the Coalition for Digital Africa is an alliance of like-minded organizations committed to building a robust and secure Internet infrastructure to bring more Africans online. More information is available at www.coalitionfordigitalafrica.africa.