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Africa Gets Its Own Web Address (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the their-moment dept.

Africa now has the unique web address .africa, equivalent to the more familiar .com, following its official launch by the African Union. From a report on BBC: AU commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma hailed its creation as the moment when Africa "got [its] own digital identity." The AU says the .africa domain name will "bring the continent together as an internet community." Addresses can now reflect a company's interest in the whole of Africa. For example, a mobile phone company could create mobile.africa to show its Africa-wide presence, or a travel company could set up travel.africa.

5 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Same as .com by barbariccow · · Score: 4, Informative

    Equivalent to .com? What, we can't say TLD here? Slashdot: catering to the LCD :(

  2. Re:Too long, didn't type by rvw14 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Time to register imisstherainsdownin.africa

  3. Enough already with the TLDs by TroII · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wish them luck, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to be creating yet another top-level domain.

    For example, a mobile phone company could create mobile.africa to show its Africa-wide presence, or a travel company could set up travel.africa.

    So they'll sell off a few hundred generic words to speculators, but I predict few others will be buying in. Many of the new gTLDs created over the past couple of years are either shutting down, or jacking up domain prices into the multi-hundred dollar per year range just to stay in operation. Keeping a TLD alive isn't cheap, and it turns out there's not much demand for all of this namespace after all. When you can't amortize your TLD's infrastructure cost across millions of customers, you wind up having to price each domain so high that nobody's going to buy one.

    --
    "If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
  4. Re:Too long, didn't type by Tempest_2084 · · Score: 4, Informative

    That would be I *bless* the rains down in Africa.

  5. The Summary is Blatently Wrong by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Africa didn't get its own web address. Some company registered the Africa Top Level Domain (TLD). This company has total control over the TLD and likely has no relationship to the continent or any of the countries in it. In all likelyhood the registrant for the TLD is a European or American company hoping to make big bucks charging people to use the TLD. In 10 years 99.999999999% of the domains on this TLD will not even involve an African company or individual.