Landrush for .Africa Domains Enters Final Week

The Landrush Phase for the newly launched .africa domain name enters its 4th Phase and final week from 26th June 2017.

The Landrush Phase for .africa domain name system offers companies, organizations and individuals to apply for domain names containing keywords valuable enough to pay a premium for. Domain names with single words that attract heavy every day use are very typical during this Phase.

.africa is the top-level domain name system for the continent of Africa. It is open to all individuals and entities in Africa or ones that identify with with Africa, globally. .africa domains are available in Landrush Phase from Web4Africa, an accredited .africa domain name registrar, said Mr. Oluniyi Ajao, managing director, Web4Africa (www.web4africa.africa).

This Landrush Phase is not exclusive to the .africa top-level domain but is normal with all newly-launched domain name extensions. All things being equal, there is a much better chance that the domain can be obtained during this Phase.

Speaking on the Landrush Phase which ends this week, Mr. Oluniyi Ajao, reiterated certain names that have got prior rights associated with them will not go through unless the applicant has already specifically validated rights in the Mark Validation System (MVS) or Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH) database. When processing a Landrush Application, Web4Africa will receive a Claims Notice if the string is registered in the MVS or TMCH.

At the end of the Landrush phase, he reemphasized, all uncontested domain applications will be delegated while all contested domain applications will proceed to an Auction Phase. Applicants will be notified by the .africa registry on the Auction process should this occur.

Domain auctions will last a minimum of 3 days. Any bids within the final 12 hours will extend any auction by an additional 24 hours.

.africa has already demonstrated serious interests from global brands and entities within Africa who are trademark owners as about 1,000 domains were successfully secured during the Sunrise Phase, making it one of the top ten largest number of domain name reservations during the sunrise phase of the new geographic Top Level Domain (gTLD) 's launch process.

The General Availability phase would follow, from 4th July 2017. The domains would then be available on a first-come-first-served basis.

“We are in Africa, and Africa is in us. We believe in the future of Africa and that .africa would offer Africans a strong identity on the World Wide Web”, Mr. Ajao said.

Established in 2002, Web4Africa is an ICANN Accredited Domain Name Registrar offering popular top-level domains (like .com, .net, .xyz, .africa) and country-code domains (like .ng, .za, .uk) to clients worldwide.  Based in Johannesburg South Africa, Web4Africa offers Web Hosting, Virtual Private Servers, Dedicated Servers and related solutions from 4 datacentres across Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.