2017 OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF THE “.AFRICA” DOMAIN
Have you ever seen a website URL that ended with “.Africa” before? Well, this year you will! A new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) has been released for the continent this year. It will be launched publicly in July of this year. But until then, starting from the 4th of April, companies in Africa with registered trademarks have been given access to secure their own dotAfrica domain names that match their trademarks. But, what is a gTLD? What does the new dotAfrica domain mean? How did it come about? Read on to find out.
A gTLD is simply a suffix to an internet address that identifies or associates it with a class. For example, if it’s a commercial website, then .com, if it’s a non-profit organization, then .org, if the company is in Switzerland, then .is, and so forth. Hence, a dotAfrica domain would associate the website or the company as being in Africa. These gTLDs are approved and released by a corporation called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN).
The introduction of the new domain name would give increased commercial, cultural, linguistic, religious and personal rights protection for websites based in Africa. It can enhance the intellectual property management systems of countries across Africa. This domain was officially endorsed by the African Union in 2009 and has taken 8 years to become a reality.
The release of the new domain will occur in stages. It has begun with a Sunrise Period from the 4th of April to 2nd June during which trademark owners can secure domain names first. This will be followed by Landrush Period and finally a General Availability period. (Read more on these periods at this link.)