Post-IANA: ICAAN pledges increased voice for Africa community

Africa’s domain name registration community will receive a boost following the recent hand over, by U.S. Commerce Department, the control of the Internet’s “address book’, the highest level of the Domain Naming System, or DNS, to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN), Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can report.

Pierre Dandjinou, vice president, Stakeholder Engagement – Africa at ICAAN in an email interview with Nigeria CommunicationsWeek said the Body was very pleased with the historic milestone.

Dandjinou said, “Two and a half years ago, the ICANN multistakeholder Community embarked on a journey to develop a globally agreed on plan to transition the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) stewardship of the IANA functions to the global Internet Community and here we are today.

“This is a proud moment for us and the global Internet Community. We are very proud to be a part of the global multi-stakeholder model of Internet Governance and I want to congratulate the ICANN Community, especially here in Africa, on their hard work over the past two years to get us where we are today,” he said.

He said that the gesture by US Government will not have major impact on Internet governance; however, ICAAN will not relent on its oars to setting and implementing programmes that will benefit the global domain name administration community.

“There is no impact”, he Dandjinou, “ICANN is responsible for setting and implementing the rules that facilitate the Internet’s unique identifiers and supporting the technical operation of the Domain Name System (DNS). Governance on the Internet goes beyond technical issues and involves complex social, economic and transnational issues related to the use of the Internet. This area is outside of ICANN’s remit”.