AfriNIC: Engaging Africa in The Global Market

Africa is now the fastest growing region when it comes to technology and startups. Africa has been launching successful and promising startups like Mxit, a mobile instant messaging utility which offers a wide range of services and Yola (formerly known as Synthasite), a website builder which lets you create your own website with easy-to-use drag and drop multimedia features and ICANN supports the African tech industry through AFRINIC.

AfriNIC or the Africa’s Regional Registry for Internet Number Resources is the regional internet registry or RIR for Africa. It was launched in 2004 and became operational in 2005. Just this week, ICANN and AfriNIC has announced that it will launch an initiative to increase African tech leaders to participate and be actively influential in the ICANN domain community.

The initiative was brought by Steve Crocker, Chairman of ICANN’s Board of Directors during the June Meeting at Prague, Czech Republic. It was attended by the new CEO Fadi Chehadé and the acting CEO Akram Atallah with African community members.

The primary purpose of the meeting in Prague which also happened to be the 44th public meeting of ICANN was to establish a framework and strategy on boosting the tech industry of Africa as well making sure that African tech leaders participate in the ICANN meetings and gatherings. The initial plan for the ICANN and AfriNIC’s strategy is scheduled on October 2012 at the Public Meeting in Toronto, Canada. The initiative will also booster the promotion of the multi-stakeholder model in Africa at the government, corporate and any other types of organization.

Tarek Kamel of Egypt will serve as the Senior Advisor on global issues and will closely work on the Africa initiative. Tarek is well known for outstanding achievements in promoting the Internet and its multi-stakeholder model in the third world and rising countries.

With this new initiative, we can expect tech businesses in Africa to have a strong presence in the global market. Startups are doing well in the African region now and investors are conducting events like the Startups World to discover new tech businesses and developers.