ICANN seeks increased support for DNS industry within Africa

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has called for increased support to the Domain Name System (DNS) industry within the African Continent.

Göran Marby, president of ICANN reiterated the call at a two-day capacity building workshop held by ICANN in Nairobi, Kenya, stressing that the African Union (AU) has roles to play in boosting the industry’s growth among member countries.

Speaking to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek, Marby said that ICANN views Africa region as strategic in deepening the industry, while calling on AU to also show more commitment to Internet Protocol Version Six (IPv6) migration. ‎

IPv6 is the latest version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet.

The Protocol was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion.

“One of the things I made very clear during a meeting with the African Union Commission (AUC) earlier today is to having an understanding of the need for Internet Protocol Version Six (IPv6). The Union needs to articulate how to encourage each country to queue, migrating to for IPv6.

“The positive thing is that the technology for IPv6 is globally applicable and Africa is not left behind. I think as other continents are migrating, Africa, as a well-positioned partner, will not be left behind. That is why we support the trainings, workshops to build and boost engineers’ competencies in the IPv6 technicalities,” the ICANN President told Nigeria CommunicationsWeek on phone.

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