Why Nigeria Has Fewer ICANN Accredited Registrars- NiRA

The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA) has explained why the country accounts for fewer domain name registrars accredited by the  Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN inferred in its First Report on Africa Domain Name System (DNS) Market, in total, there are only 11 ICANN accredited registrars in the region- four in South Africa, two in Morocco and one each in Burundi, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia out of a global total of 2,143.

The report which includes 54 countries shows there are, as of May 2017, some 5.1 million domain names associated with Africa. The total annual value of the African Domain Name market is some $52 million.

Reacting to the report, Sunday Folayan, NiRA President, who recently attended ICANN Meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa where the report was presented, in an email to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek wrote,"Yes,…at the meeting where the report was presented, indeed, I took to the microphone to give some insights, based on the contents of the report.

He said that Nigeria has two not one ICANN accredited registrars; however, they sell generic Domains, whereas Nigerian registrars are primarily concerned with the growth of .ng brand.

According to Folayan, NIRA's interest is in popularizing the Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) .ng domain and not the generic domains like .com which is the purview of ICANN accredited Registrars.

Presently, NIRA has over 60 Accredited Registrars selling .ng domains and has developed programmes to speed up .ng domain (brand) growth.

"It is in NIRA's interest to sell more .ng domains names, and not gTLD domains, hence more ICANN accredited Registrars will obviously give those registrars more reasons not to register .ng domain names, a strategy that conflicts with our ccTLD agenda.

Key findings of the report indicate that from May 2017 a total of just over 3.5 million domains are active under the African ccTLDs ; there are also about 1.4 million registrations in the gTLDs by African entities.

Over the last six months (November 2016 – May 2017), African ccTLD domains have increased by 21%.

However, almost all (93%) of this increase was in fact in the four Freenom ‘domain hack’ countries. Nevertheless, the statistics quoted in the remainder of this Report are based on the November 2016 figure of 2.9 million ccTLD domain names.

Registrations by Africans of gTLD domains total approximately 1.4 million, the bulk of which is ~1.2 million .COM domains.

The research indicates that high access costs, the lack of infrastructure and the fact that African Internet access is primarily via mobile devices results in a lower demand for domain names than elsewhere.

This was confirmed by responses to the survey, with respondents citing high prices as the biggest barrier to the development of the DNS market in most African countries followed by lack of infrastructure.  Other broader issues identified as high barriers by respondents include poor dependability of Internet connections and unclear or restrictive policy and regulatory environments.

In addition, the research analysed the relationship, if any, between a country’s ranking in relation to levels of freedom (using rankings by Freedom House and IIAG) and the number of domains registered.

But, the NiRA President said that the report focused on domains, instead of the business in general, which is obviously more than domains.

"The report also should be an annual report, with about 2 years of track record before its findings can be of any significance. In any case, the authors admit those deficiencies", he added.