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15-08-04, 08:21 PM
Foreigners have gobbled up Africa's first-level dot.com names, the
Internet's most valuable real estate. They have grabbed Nairobi.
Kenya, your country, and Tusker, your beer, have gone too. So has Dar
es Salaam, Kampala, Kinshasa, Banjul, Dakar and a host of other
African capitals. Even provincial towns like Thika, Juba and Kitwe
have been taken.
So too has Africa's heroes like Kenyatta, Nkrumah, and Nyerere. Even
Moi and Kibaki have gone.
Even generic Swahili words such as elimu, sokoni, arusi, sheria,
daktari, shule and a host of other one-word generic words have gone.
Domain names – the Internet addressing system – are critical as they
affect the way people look for information. The top-level dot.coms
are the most sought after. If they are proprietary, short and easy to
remember, such as coke.com, they are hot property.
What is happening to Africa's domain names is the greatest land grab
of the century - a veritable gold rush reminiscent of America's Wild
West and the Scramble for Africa. And all this is happening as we
prepare for the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia
next year. The United Nations-backed conference is inspired by the
vision of an information society where everyone can create, share and
receive knowledge.
A follow-up on the World Summit on the Information Society held in
Geneva last December, the Tunis summit will pursue its action plan
for bridging the digital divide between developed and developing
nations. This includes such issues as Internet governance, access and
the principle of inclusiveness. The summit will need a Hannibal, this
time not to cross the Alps from Tunisia to conquer Rome, but to route
those hordes of speculators squatting on Africa's cyber space.
The cyber savvy entrepreneurs have beaten us to the only game in
cyber space. To get our domain names back, Africa would have to pay
millions of dollars to the cyber squatters.
The cyber squatters register domain names with no intention of ever
using them. They "sit" on them waiting for the rightful owner to come
along and pay a tidy sum to have their name back. In a recent case,
the government of New Zealand paid half a million US dollars to a US-
based cyber squatter to get back its name, "newzealand.com". This is
what is awaiting Africa. If Nairobi, for example, wants its name
back, City Hall may have to cough up some serious money.
That is the law. Domain names are property. They can be bought and
sold through brokers, auctions, and private transactions. Currently,
the average going price is about $15,000, though heftier sums can be
obtained for popular one-word generic names, brand names and
proprietary names such as kenya.com, tusker.com, or safari.com.
Domain names are allocated on a "first-come, first-served basis". So
if you are not prescient enough to grab your own domain name you lose
it to the quick-thinking grabbers in the United States and
elsewhere.
This colonisation of Africa's most valuable real estate means that we
have no way of easily participating in the information society with
equality. We remain digital banana republics.
The Tunis World Summit on the Information Society, which will take
place from 16 to 18 November 2005, is expected to take into account
the special needs of developing countries that are the world's
information "have nots". And while everybody agrees that something
needs to be done about the structure and management of the Internet,
there is disagreement on how this should be done. The United States
and the European Union, on the one hand, are favouring the status
quo, while China and many developing countries such as South Africa,
are demanding a change.
The United Nations under-secretary general for communication and
public information, Mr Shashi Tharoo, says that the UN is not
interested, as some have suggested, in wresting control of the
Internet's naming and addressing system from the current manager, the
US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Rather,
he says, the UN is providing a platform where all parties can meet to
discuss how the Internet should operate.
What the UN actually wants from the Internet, Mr Tharoor says, is
that it fulfills its promise by delivering opportunities to people –
all people. And that should include the people of Africa.
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