Today marked the final day of the 5th AfTLD African ccTLD event in Accra, Ghana. On tap for the week were three days of ccTLD workshops, two days of policy meetings, and an annual general meeting based on the theme “Enhancing Internet Management in Africa”. Hosts included the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), the Ministry of Communications, Network Computer Systems (current .gh sponsoring organization), and other local sponsors. The main goal of the event was to look at state of African ccTLDs, including the impact of new generic top-level domain on ccTLDs in Africa. Of special interest were best practices, IPv6 facts, the multi-stakeholder approach, and security issues.

{AFTLD.org}

The presentation of a 5-year strategic plan outlined challenges facing ccTLDs:

• Many AF ccTLDs are not technically up and doing
• Some AF ccTLD still operated from outside continent technically
• Many AF ccTLD operate in non-sustainable basis
• Many AF ccTLD not visible within Society and outside

Additionally, Tweets from the two days have been broadcast thanks to Joe Kiragu’s (@joekirags) use of the #AfTLD hashtag. oAfrica comments are in bold:

• Africa enjoying significant growth on internet access, this is not the case with ccTLD growth lack of interest in local content…presumably an interest in Facebook instead
• .co.za has over 650,000 domain names (African Registry Consortium) well ahead of other African nations
• .so domains at 25,000 mark, most of them registered international in Asia as opposed to Somali anyone can register a .so domain…does .so count as truly African? should it be restricted?
• In less that few month .So (Somali) has grown to be the second biggest ccTLD in Africa doesn’t mean much considering how it’s regulated
• .tz domain names at 4,000 mark – tzNIC
• Internet usage in Africa at 14.8% while the rest of the world is at 85.2%.lags behind Africa –  MainOne sponsor stat is higher than 10.9% ITU June 2010, but seems fair
• There are more exchange points in East Africa than West Africa – Michuuki Mwangi