CIO East Africa Managing Editor Zachary Ochieng spoke to Sophia Bekele, Founder and Executive Director, DotConnect Africa (DCA) on the organisation’s role and businesses should take advantage of fibre optic cables.
Excerpts:
CIO: What prompted the launch and endorsement of DotConnect Africa?
SB: DCA was launched to support the “.Africa” initiative, while at the same time there was a need to address the Internet governance policy gaps that exist between Africa and the rest of the world. The endorsement of the organization by different stakeholders follow the same. Personally, my work in ICANN had an influence. I picked up quickly that the policies developed by ICANN over issues governing the global Internet particularly domain names could determine the gap in the digital divide within our global economy.
Aside from myself, the founders and initiators of DCA are also Africans plus those living in the Diaspora who are passionate about the same issues above and looking onward to their roots to contribute to the continent. Some remain overseas, some are on African soil, and some of us shuttle back and forth frequently for over a decade. The group that got together is not motivated by profit opportunities, but a desire to contribute to the continent in a unique opportunity. Therefore, the policy makers, regional bodies and Government entities we approached, aside from our proposals and our past contributions, but also saw our passion and dedication for the continent, which was a parallel match to our /their own agenda and priority for the continent. We requested the African Union as an entry point for facilitation of the domain name. However, we have already obtained the endorsements of many African governments independently before the AU, including other regional organizations. While AU’s support is important, their endorsement is not a prerequisite for DCA’s approval by ICANN, the licence issuing authority for domain names. Many Internet initiatives have launched successfully without this requirement, including the African IP addressing organization and similar associations such as the national domains, ccTLDS.
CIO: What benefits do you for see following the launch?
SB: We think the “.Africa” name will assist in building an African brand primarily to contribute to economic growth. This brand will provide an amazing platform to expand businesses and their brands and provide advanced marketing and advertizing techniques. This will further promote continental and regional integration for businesses. It will allow Africa to be part of the global ICT village as all registered could reach the world by click of a second. The whole project would drive subscription to the Internet, which helps people to be part of the knowledge and the Internet society, where the next generation of business models and innovation takes place, which should in turn increase profits, and spur economic growth through employment.
DCA’s target market is a potential of 900 million Africans, including stakeholders in Government, private sector and NGOs operating in the continent, which will bring a lot of opportunity to African business, products and services online with the ".africa" name and bring people’s messages close to home than any other top-level domain ever. We expect partial profits realized to be reinvested in a variety of different projects that would ultimately provide benefits to all African citizens.
CIO:What are some of the challenges anticipated?
SB: Building brand awareness and getting people to use it will require work beyond selling. You have to get people to build content. Content in this case includes local content, where people can communicate in their own language and there is the cultural expression involved. Another challenge is the issue of adaption, which we will try to balance with cost, i.e having second level names to make it affordable for individuals, charge more for corporations and have an exclusive section for government and related identities. Yet another is the issue of how existing country codes' top-level domain registries such as ".ng," ".ke," ".ug" or ".tz." will feel neutralized. However, we plan to advertise and promote a common African identity and brand by working with the respective domain holders in order to generate revenue as well as protect and advance the corporate brands.
Of course the domain industry is part of the Internet revolution and the Internet is poised to connect an ever-greater number of users, objects and information infrastructures. Some of the challenges I see that are specific to Africa is the penetration of Internet as a result of, for instance, high cost of PCs, high cost of connectivity, power shortage and connection issues, and also lack of awareness of the value of Internet. Other areas that raise concerns are notably in the area of reliability, scalability, security and openness of access. This means that the policy framework governing the use of Internet and domain names needs to be adaptable, carefully crafted and co-ordinate across policy domains, broad and multiple stakeholder communities.
Another pressing need and challenge I see is also for policy makers to better understand the role and contribution of the Internet, domain names and other ICTs in driving productivity and economic growth, and as a platform for innovation. Surely “.africa” is an innovative technology that assists in increased collaboration and shared creation of products and services over the Internet. As the global reach of the Internet increases, it is necessary to ensure that co-operation on regulatory enforcement expands as well. More work is also needed to improve cross-border co-operation, broaden access to information, and combat the threats to security and stability of the Internet, as well as assessing the impact of the changing technologies in the industry, how markets and user behavior on our concept of privacy, security and consumer power.
CIO: Cybercrime remains a serious threat. What is your take on this and what is DotConnectAfrica doing to address the issue?
SB: Cybercrime is what I call a shadowy network world where the natural boundaries characterized by the offline world of crime is erased and opportunities to do harm is border-less. Law enforcement if you think about it is essentially based on the idea that the criminal is physically present at the scene of the crime. However, “Internet criminals” can be on another continent, and frequently route through several third-party countries, making their precise location difficult to determine and creating challenges for law enforcement. How many new fraud emails did I get after the Global Financial meltdown? Cybercriminality has become a multi-million dollar industry that takes advantage of the border-less nature of the Internet.
At the organization level, DCA currently follows closely DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions, which adds security to the Domain Name System), which is one of emerging international standards through participation in ITU, ICANN forums and pick on perspectives that affect Africa and pushing for new tight rules and standards from African perspective. Our representatives were some of the organizers of the recent forum held by ISOC-SF, as well as participants, where ICANN’s Chairman, Peter Dengatetrush as the guest of honour, and spoke on the subject of the political implication of DNSSEC, which DCA has echoed in the past through various international papers and at ICANN.
Through its active participation in public policy forums with the above referenced organizations and DCA’s vision is to advise, implement and present opportunities to increase trust on the Internet.
DCA believes that protecting the Internet should be a public policy priority.
CIO: What is the organisation doing to bridge the digital divide between Africa and the West?
SB: DCA has been active in developing various initiatives and programmess to address the divide. First, through our public policy and governance programme, we create the awareness of the impact in policy divide within the current Internet governance model to our stakeholders by doing presentations and participating in forums within Africa as well as within ICANN. These areas include gap analysis of policy between Government, public and policy makers, Policy risk/impact analysis for Governments & regional organisations, and legislation & legal framework; protection and promotion of these interests in regional and international platform, development of local International Domain Names (IDN) initiatives, and advising on IDN policies, development & use of local Internet content , e-government, e-strategy, privacy, Security, Spam, Standardization, Intellectual Property, liberalization & legal issues on Internet & telecom, development and training in Corporate Enterprise Governance for leadership and policymakers
Second, to ensure its stakeholder are properly served, DCA’s team is active serving on various boards, committees, councils for such key organizations and working with initiatives in collaboration with organizations such as ICANN, IETF, ITU, WIPO UNECA, UNICT, UNGAID, AU and many African governments. One of the major activities that we are currently engaged in relative to domain names is assisting in the development of languages over the Internet, ie International Domain Names (IDNs).
DCA is also a founding member of the IDNTLD group which announced the launch of IDRU – the International Domain Resolution Union (www.IDRU.org). IDRU aims to make the Internet accessible in all the world’s script writing systems. That means you use your native language at both ends of the Internet address: IDN.IDN. To do that, IDRU enables international generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), the part of the address after the dot - today. The domains are not limited to those based on country codes. As such, DCA have worked on IDN versions in local languages for “.africa” to get native Africans digitally divided speakers up to speed on Internet. DCA represents International domain name (IDN) communities within ICANN and international foras.
CIO: Where do you see the Internet taking us in the next ten years?
SB: Most of the innovations we will see will be definitely be integrated with Internet. Aside from the obvious in social media trends and business models created as a result of the convergence of Internet and mobile technologies, including web 2.0 and onwards, the Internet will offer us access to a host of activities both via wired and wireless technologies. It will provide us with a platform for innovation, new communication technologies, new products and services, and access to an unparalleled wealth of information. Intense competition as a result of reduced costs and innovation will create new industries, such as what we are witnessing now in Mobile Banking.
CIO: How should African businesses position themselves to take advantage of the landing fibre optic cables?
SB: Getting online is no longer trendy, but a must for most businesses. Therefore, fibre optic connectivity to African businesses and consumer experience brings the benefit of a fair competitive market for the international connectivity, as a result of much more affordable and also providing services at a fraction of the usual cost. This, as you know is because first a direct international routing will be possible with fibre, rather than say current traffic in East and Southern Africa being routed via Middle East or India, which causes transmission delays or high latency issues. African businesses therefore can take advantage of this Internet traffic to roll out high bandwidth-intensive applications. African ISPs can be in a position of delivering direct, affordable and reliable connectivity as a result, and consumers will also benefit from low cost and high performance solutions and services, which will spur economic growth and creations of higher standards of living.
In general, the arrival of a high speed, high performance international connectivity with these fiber landings will have a dramatic impact on existing communication capabilities of particularly small businesses as well as provide opportunities to access to global markets, creating new business models, such as outsourcing, marketing via social media etc..
The notion that most Africans have to continuously leave school, university to tarmac for jobs, changes completely. Fibre connectivity allows for development of SOHO (Small Office Home Office) businesses that can now be incorporated to offer outsourced services backwards to both big corporations or small medium sized companies. Online commerce is now a real opportunity and a great one for those with great minds and have the potential for becoming entrepreneurs overnight.
For big business the occasion to reach global markets using the rich Internet resource is now an opportunity as well as a treat. If your product and service has been a novelty for years, using the old business models, chances are that most people can now duplicate your business online using ICTs and take over market share if you are not paying attention. A good case in point is the development of interesting travel and tour portals that give travellers the option to determine their travel destinations, accommodation and transport methods worldwide without contacting their travel agents. On the other hand, you equally have the opportunity to grow your market share by embracing online strategies that include e-commerce by creating the supporting organizational structure for success.
For consumers, there will be an easy and open access to information within Africa and globally to allow for personal development associated with the knowledge economy.
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Bekele: “Getting online a must for businesses”
