Africa warned against using American networks

[Walter]

Accessing and providing information, goods and services as well as
having fun over the internet are slowly gaining popularity in many
parts of Africa.

However, many African businesses and organisations are doing so on
platforms that are legally owned by United States-based corporations
and regulated under the American laws.

The danger is that owners of the websites can lose power and content
posted on Internet based territories or domain names like; dot
com, .biz, .net, .info, and .org, without winning a court case,
because they are not the legal owners of the websites.

“Juristically, it is not your content, but for other people
(Americans),” said Ms Anne-Rachel Inné, Africa regional relations
manager of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN).

The United States-based Corporation is in charge of coordinating the
global domain name system organisation in charge of internet
operations.

Ms Inné was speaking to hundreds of African journalists that gathered
at the Highway Africa conference in Grahamstown, South Africa on
September 7.

The relations manager added that the real owners have the right to
block those websites or do whatever they want with them because they
are mandated under the American law.

It is for this reason that ICANN called on people and businesses in
Africa to establish their own online platforms when the body permits
more businesses and people to open their own portals as has been
requested by international stakeholders.

ICANN will next year open up the domain names space under the generic
top level domain names category where organisation and companies can
register their websites. The move will enable organisations,
individuals, cities, and companies to establish their own domain
names. For example, if a Ugandan company X needs to post its services
on .kampala or .company X instead of .com or .biz, it will be possible
by April next year.

“We need to take seriously our networks, there is no way we can use
other people’s networks. We have to use local domain names,” Ms Inne
later told Business Power, in exclusive interview at the conference.

“That’s where you can build applications and have content in local
languages. There’s no way you are going to do it on other people’s
networks.”

Harnessing local networks and internet portals is also the most
efficient and secure way African would venture into successful online
health, education and governance services.

ICANN says it is also a way of applying breaks on the capital flight
that is currently rocking Africa, as the continent’s investors
continue to spend millions of dollars to buy domain names from the
West.

“This can be money that could stay at home and be reinvested to
develop the continent,” she said. ICANN called on interested parties
to submit their applications to book domain names of their interest
through their website www.icann.org.

“The reason why Africa should be interested is that when someone from
another region wants to take your heritage name, we will know and
oppose the idea,” she said.

In addition to allowing companies and individuals owning domain names
of their preference, ICANN is also going to open the space in many
more languages like Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. This means that in
the near future, it would also be possible for local Ugandan languages
to be used to communicate on local networks instead of the habitual
English.

[Wanjiku]

The Highway Africa conference, held last week in Grahamstown, South
Africa, is the largest gathering of African ICT journalists.
Computerworld Kenya interviewed Anne-Rachel Inne, Africa's regional
liaison at the International Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN).

Computerworld Kenya: Why are there very few African countries
participating in ICANN activities?

Anne-Rachel Inne: This is not a problem affecting Africa only and it
may be because ICANN does not have a lot of fellowships; it is a
problem for all developing countries where people don't have the means
to go to international meetings. The meetings are held in various
places and the pricing changes. One time it could be $1,000 and the
next it could be $5,000, which is challenging for participants in
Africa.

Another issue may come from the nature of the organization -- ICANN is
not an intergovernmental [body], and government officials must receive
formal invitations and explain what ICANN is before they are allowed
to go.

The Internet has evolved and is more pervasive so one has to be
proactive and look for ways to participate locally and
internationally, via, for example, remote instruments we keep setting
up to facilitate that.

Computerworld Kenya: Why is the business community not interested,
compared to other regions?

Inne: Maybe just because they ignore the benefits of participating.
And maybe because the ones that could be most interested are from the
GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications] community in the region,
and they view it as services on mobiles so ICANN does not readily come
to mind

ICANN has hired and is still hiring regionally to get more outreach to
the Internet community at large, and engaging more with the business
community.

The hiring of regional representatives who speak various languages and
understand the regions has also helped in engaging the community.
ICANN has slowly become more international.

Computerworld Kenya: African countries have criticized ICANN for not
helping in the redelegation of their country code top level domains;
has ICANN tried its best?

Inne: There is a lot of confusion over what ICANN can do or can't do.
The redelegation process is well set out by IANA (the Internet
Assigned Numbers Authority), and we spend time to explain that we
can't interfere in local matters. That is not to say ICANN can't help
in thinking it over and showing how it's done elsewhere. ICANN
officials worked with Kenya over the redelegation of .ke from an
individual to a multistakeholder body. Most recently, we worked with
Nigeria to redelegate .ng in the same conditions.

Lack of knowledge has led people to think ICANN will redelegate
without proper documentation, data and technical infrastructure to
ensure that any Internet users under the domain are not switched off
when redelegation is done. There are people with businesses on that
ccTLD; we must make sure that we don't just switch off people
following a redelegation. In some cases, people don't understand the
technical issues that you need in place to make the TLD work and run
consistently.

Other countries have differences over which body should run the ccTLD
registry and think that ICANN can help them in determining the right
body to run it, but this is a sovereign matter and beyond ICANN.

I concur with a recent view by Vika Mpisane, [of the] Africa TLD
organization, who noted that half of African ccTLDs are having issues.
They are not being run properly because of administrative and
technical management issues or internal fights on who has the right to
oversee the TLD.

Computerworld Kenya: ICANN has been reaching out to Africa for
increased participation. What are some of the benefits?

Inne: ICANN meetings are attended by about 1,000 people from 70
different countries. It is a forum to network and talk to counterparts
on software, networks, security, sharing challenges and getting help.

The best example is perhaps the case of Brazil, which offered to train
African ccTLD operators on using the open-source registry system
that .br was using. Kenya and Tanzania have benefited from the
training, and Kenya's registry is one of the good examples.

In every ICANN meeting, the country code Name Supporting Organization
(ccNSO) has a full day of technical workshops. An African ccTLD can
come and present challenges and exchange ideas.

In the meetings, the root server operators are present and could help
in exchanging ideas on how the ccTLD can get a copy of the root
server, which improves the registry stability and resilience in case
of DDoS attacks.

Other more advanced ccTLDs offer to host copies of registry data where
in case of an attack, the data will be available globally -- the
registry is not switched off. IANA has a repository of the ccTLDs
offering secondary platforms where the African ccTLD data can run on
other networks free -- and in case of anything, the information is
still visible.

Computerworld Kenya: How is ICANN working with regional organizations
to raise awareness in Africa?

ICANN is working with AfriNIC on IPV6 adoption in Africa, holding
workshops for technical managers and ensuring that Africa is ready.
AfTLD and ICANN collaborate on workshops for ccTLD managers.

One of the reasons I am at Highway Africa is to engage media and get
the message out: our domains are still not functioning properly; we
have jurisdictional problems; maintenance of networks is still a
challenge we have with broadband coming.

Training and human resource is still a problem. How many people do we
have that can react to a DDos attack? This is not a prerogative of
ICANN, but with country code networks, we will always help and work
with Internet communities