South Africa’s ZA Central Registry (ZACR), which is in line to manage the .africa internet domain, says Neil Dundas has stepped down as its chief executive officer.

Subsequently, Lucky Masilela has become the ZACR’s new CEO, while Dundas moves into a chief operating officer position for the organisation.

Masilela has been the chair of the SA Communications Forum (SACF) and is a current board member of the MICT (Media, Information and Communication Technologies) SETA and a former board member of the ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA).

Masilela has been a member of a team tasked with reassessing South Africa’s national ICT policy. He also spent 17 years working at Siemens SA.

900,000 .co.za domain registrations have been facilitated by the ZACR, which was formerly known as Uniforum ZA.

But Masilela wants to ensure that more black South Africans become registrars of .co.za domains.

"It was while chairing the working committee in preparation for ICANN 47 in Durban that I fully understood what tremendous potential the DNS industry had in South Africa and what a gem this country possessed in the ZACR as a centre of excellence. I also realised that the ZACR needed to transform into an agent of change through the offering of DNS training to black registrars, in particular," says Masilela in a statement.

"In this way we will be able to attract the skills we need while accelerating the transformation of the industry which will be good for all stakeholders. By enabling more promising individuals interested in the DNS industry to access our accredited training courses, the ZACR will be able to boost black ownership of registrars," he added.

The ZACR is expected to start rolling out .africa, .capetown, .joburg and .durban domains by the end of this year, after being named the preferred bidder for these online properties by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Neil Dundas has previously been acknowledged one of South Africa’s IT Personalities of the Year for 2012.