ICANN receives input from governments through the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). The GAC's key role is to provide advice to ICANN on issues of public policy, and especially where there may be an interaction between ICANN's activities or policies and national laws or international agreements. The GAC usually meets three times a year in conjunction with ICANN meetings, where it discusses issues with the ICANN Board and other ICANN Supporting Organisations, Advisory Committees and other groups. The GAC may also discuss issues between times with the Board either through face-to-face meetings or by teleconference.
Membership of the GAC is open to all national governments and distinct economies as recognised in international fora. Multinational governmental organisations and treaty organisations may join the GAC as observers. Currently, the GAC is regularly attended by approximately 50 national governments, distinct economies, and global organisations such as the ITU, UNESCO, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), INTERPOL and regional organisations such as the OECD, Asia Pacific Forum, and Council of Europe.
Read more about the GAC from ICANN here:
GAC Core Principles
ICANN Bylaws
GAC Members
GAC Meetings
GAC Topics
GAC Advice
GAC Resources
Ask your Domain Registrar or ISP about dotAfrica domain registrations. You may wish to participate in Sunrise if you have any rights to the name. Find a dotAfrica Domain Registrar here.
For the latest status updates, please visit dotafrica.org.
The .africa TLD will be launched in two phases, namely:
If you are a trademark holder ICANN prescribes a process, which we as the Registry Operator need to follow to ensure that genuine trademarks are protected and sold to the valid entity. The trademark holder will need to register their trademarks with the ICANN Trademark Clearing House or the Mark Validation System.
This will depend on individual Registrar pricing, in which launch phase you register the domain and if the domain is a premium name or not.
There are various protection mechanisms and policies, which the Registry Operator needs to adhere to and we are also bound by ICANN to make these policies part of our operations.
The various policies include:
See the Policy menu item above for more information.
Pre-registration .africa domain names will not be possible. Any application submitted during the dotAfrica Sunrise phase must have a corresponding validation token (SMD) in order to obtain the highest possible priority allocation.
If an applicant wants to secure the best possible claim to a domain name application during the launch, it must be associated with a pre-validated trade mark in either the TMCH or MVS. Without this a claim to the corresponding domain name is relegated to lesser priority status. The official way in which you can best secure your rights to a name in the new .africa namespace would be through the pre-validation of a registered mark.
See the MVS at www.markvalidation.com for more information.
For more detailed information on the launch program with the anticipated timelines, click here. If you have any rights to the .africa domain/s name you want, you should apply during Sunrise.
dotAfrica is the new Top Level Domain (TLD) for the African continent: It is an African initiative created by Africans for Africans and the worldwide audience of companies, organisations and individuals interested in, associated with and connected with the African community and markets.
The dotAfrica initiative is fully endorsed by the African Union (AU) and has widespread support across the continent - from African governments, the business sector, civil society and the technical community. dotAfrica is led by a multi-stakeholder Steering Committee from across the continent.
