Support for the ZA Central Registry’s (ZACR) bid to host the generic top-level domain (gTLD) .africa has come from the African Forum on Best Practices in ICT.

The Africa Forum on Best Practices in ICT is a pan-African conference hosted by Burkina Faso and supported by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

Meanwhile, the ZACR is in line to start managing the dotAfrica domain in 2014 owing to it being the only bidder to pass the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) ‘initial evaluation phase’ in mid-2013 for the internet name. The ZACR currently also manages South Africa’s co.za internet domain name.

The African Forum on Best Practices in ICT has specifically expressed its support for the creation of a generic top-level (gTLD) domain for Africa while also endorsing the African Union Commission's choice of the ZA Central Registry (ZACR) to oversee its launch and management.

The declaration follows a mid-October Burkina Faso conference, which was under the patronage of the country’s president, Blaise Compaore.

“The Ouagadougou Declaration is just another example of the tremendous support the dotAfrica initiative enjoys, and the growing excitement that is building as we approach the launch of this exciting new domain,” says Koffi Fabrice Djossou, Africa Liaison for the dotAfrica project at ZACR.