ICANN, ISOC & AFTLD Prepare For 5th Africa DNS Forum

The fifth Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Forum is being organized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), in partnership with the Internet Society (ISOC) and the Africa Top Level Domains Organization (AFTLD).

A statement endorsed by Buket Coskuner, global communications coordinator, EMEA, indicates the forum, which is being hosted by the Tanzania Network Information Centre (tzNIC), will take place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from 26-28 July 2017. This year’s theme will be “Taking Stock of the Africa DNS Industry and Planning Ahead.”

The forum comes on the heels of the recently released Africa DNS Market Report, the first of its kind in the region, which provides a detailed analysis of the DNS market for 54 countries. As such, one of the highlights of the forum will be a session dedicated to discussing the report and determining the key outcomes and next steps. Other topics to be covered during panel discussions will include securing the African DNS, legal issues affecting African registries, registrars and resellers, IPv6 deployment, and emerging trends in the DNS industry.

Luna Madi, communications director, EMEA also highlighted that the objective of the annual event is to bring together interested parties from Africa and world experts in the field to share experiences and update the audience on new developments in the domain industry on both a global and regional level.

This year’s forum follows on success of the preceding forums, which were held in Durban, South Africa (2013), Abuja, Nigeria (2014), Nairobi, Kenya (2015) and Marrakech, Morocco (2016).

By holding the forum in different parts of Africa, ICANN aims to provide equal opportunities to regional stakeholders, inform the continent’s different communities about the domain industry and engage with attendees on how best to strengthen Africa’s digital presence.

ICANN supports the development of a stronger and more dynamic regional domain industry, and we look forward to this fifth edition of the Africa DNS Forum.