Africa’s dedicated ‘space’ on the internet, the .africa domain name, could be launched in March 2014 says the ZA Central Registry (ZACR).

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opened applications for new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) names last year with the likes of Nike applying for .nike and African mobile operator MTN applying for .mtn.

Two bidders applied for .africa: South Africa’s ZA Central Registry (ZACR) and Kenyan-based DotConnectAfrica (DCA).

Subsequently, ZACR’s bid for the gTLD ‘dotAfrica’ passed ICANN'S ‘initial evaluation phase’ in mid-2013, while the DCA failed to progress beyond this stage.

As dotAfrica is regarded as a geographic domain name by ICANN, a key component in passing the initial evaluation phase has involved bidders obtaining support from over 60% of all African governments.

ZACR successfully ticked off this requirement with support coming from the African Union Commission (AUC) and more than 75% of African governments.

But in a twist of events, the AUC and a number of African governments raised objections to the DCA’s bid for dotAfrica, despite the DCA having controversially claimed that it had previously received support from the likes of the AUC.

After failing to pass ICANN’s initial evaluation phase, the DCA then asked the ICANN board to reconsider the evaluation phase decision, but ICANN this month even rejected this appeal.

Options for DCA to get back into the dotAfrica race could include legal action against ICANN, but it is unclear as to whether DCA intends to pursue this route.

In the meantime, though, ZACR has emerged as the frontrunner in the dotAfrica race.

And despite ZACR not having signed a contract with ICANN to manage the dotAfrica domain name, the South African headquartered registry, which also manages the .co.za domain name, has started the ball rolling on preparing to launch .africa in March 2014.

“The next phase is contract negotiation and contract signing. Hopefully that should be done before the next meeting that’s taking place in Buenos Aires, before the next ICANN meeting,” Kenyan-based Alice Munyua (pictured left), who is leading the dotAfrica Reserve Name List (RNL) process, told ITWeb Africa, referring to the meeting that takes place 17-21 November 2013.

“But in the meantime obviously we do have to get on with the launch processes, which include obviously the reserving for governments and other processes that we have underway,” Munyua said, highlighting an estimated launch date of March 2014.

On Tuesday, the ZA Central Registry (ZACR) announced that its dotAfrica ‘Reserve Name List’ process for governments is planned to kick-off on 15 September 2013.

The process, which Munyua said is expected to be completed in February 2014, is planned to allow African governments to apply to protect names under three main categories: geographic; religious, cultural and linguistic names, and economic and public interest names.

The RNL process is also expected to cover a fourth category: offensive names that “could advocate prejudice or hatred on the basis of race, ethnicity, political association, gender, sexuality, religion, conscience or culture.”

The ZACR said offensive names are planned to be listed on the RNL indefinitely, and are expected to be blocked from registration by any party.

The default limit for each government is 100 names, with 20 applications in the offensive names category, the ZACR said in a statement.

“We’re giving each country 20 names initially, although you never can tell how many names would be offensive in a particular country,” Munyua told ITWeb Africa.

“We’ve taken that into consideration,” Munyua said.

Mutua added that the ZACR has asked the AUC to set up a panel to deal with any disputes that could occur within governments regarding the domain name reserve list.

“All the political controversies that may arise, or the political disputes that may arise, are going to be handled by the African Union Commission,” Munyua told ITWeb Africa.

In the next two to three weeks, the ZACR team is also going to make governments aware of the process, Munyua said.

Members of the ZACR team are widespread across Africa as Munyua has told ITWeb Africa that colleagues of the registry’s steering committee are based in places such as Kenya city Nairobi, Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, the island nation of Mauritius, Nigeria and Senegal.

“We are going to approaching all the governments, but it’s going to be incumbent upon the governments themselves to ensure that they submit the reserve names on time,” Munyua said.

“We are making the best efforts we can that governments are aware,” Munyua concluded.