The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is expanding in Africa as it plans to have six new ICANN representatives on the continent.

This is according to the President of ICANN, Fadi Chehadé, who is quoted in a press statement.

ICANN performs functions such as coordinating the global Domain Name System (DNS), Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name systems.

“We will have ICANN staff, at least one, in each of the 6 regions of Africa. North, South, East, West, Central and the Indian Ocean,” said Chehadé.

“I want African on-ramps into the ICANN structures. I will give you the on-ramps, but you need to climb them.”said Fadi Chehadé.

Chehadé made his comments during the Africa Multi-stakeholder Internet Governance meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The two-day meeting ended Friday after drawing Internet leaders from across the continent.

The ICANN leader also said he would like to see an increase in the number of accredited Domain Name Registrars on the African continent. Currently, there are only five accredited Registrars in Africa among more than one thousand worldwide, according to ICANN.

But Chehadé said he wants to see that number increase five-fold in less than two years.

“This is about us moving the needle forward. Africa will not wait,” said Chehadé.

Meanwhile, Chehadé’s comments come as two African organisations are bidding to manage the .africa internet domain name.

ICANN opened up applications for new generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) names last year with the likes of Nike applying for .nike and mobile operator MTN applying for .mtn.

An application for a new internet domain name alone costs $185,000. And ICANN; subsequently, published a list of all applied-for domain names and their applicants last year.

The list, which is publicly available online, says that the administrator for South Africa's .co.za domain UniForum SA (NPC), trading as Registry.Africa, applied for the .africa internet domain name, while Kenya's DotConnectAfrica Trust applied for the same domain name.

A decision on the winning .africa bidder; though, has not been made at the time of writing.