Why Africa ranks low on new gtld

[JFC Morfin]

At 10:57 10/07/2012, Baudouin SCHOMBE wrote:
>Indeed,
>As Alex said, the new gTLDs is still not very well back in the minds
>of African policy makers and actors.
>But I emphasize that there is a kind of mistrust on all matters
>relating to ICANN and its activities. It would be desirable that the
>registries and registrars are increasingly organized.

Baudouin,

may I submit it may be that the ICANN approach is foreign to common
sense as practiced in non-ICANN-internet matters and that Africa
feels it more than "more influenced" others? In 2000 the Linux
community asked for ".linux" and detailed the real cost it was ready
to pay ICANN for. Opening the mail requesting it, reading it, opening
the IANA root file Excel table, adding .linux and two nameservers,
saving the table. Less than $ 20 if I remember well; .linux being in
operations at the next Verisign consolidation run.

Africa is the continent with the largest number of human languages.
If we create one linguistic experimental TLD (xTLD) per linguistic
entity as per the ICANN ICP-3 document, Africa will be a TLD leader.
This only rests with African developpers and their technical
innovation, and with African lead users and their practical determination.

Not that easy to move people, but you can move machines when it is at
no real cost. I ran a 3,000 TLDs experimentations for a couple of
years that anyone could use throughout France (with a public ISP).
Then you can make some press, attract people through applications,
local sites, etc. It takes time.

Obviously the best would be to download and install a FreeNIC's
product and a FreeTLD's service. No technical concept problem: just
some smart development and a BCP for info when tested as robust
enough. If you have some African FLOSS engineers wanting to learn
Erlang and build and test it with me they are welcome.

jfc