There are currently 5.1 million domain names associated with Africa, earning the continent US$52 million every year.

A study conducted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) found that South Africa hosts roughly a third of these names, followed by Kenya whose .ke domain is among the continent’s second-most registered website addresses.

According to IT Web, Africa’s top-level DNS address space consists of 54 country code top-level domains (which increased by 21% since November 2016), five internationalised domain names – Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia – as well as three city codes, including .Capetown, .Durban and .Joburg.

Furthermore, the continent only has 11 ICANN accredited registrars in the region – four in South Africa, two in Morocco and one each in Burundi, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia – compared to the global total of 2 143. However, many other registrars are active in Africa, with 450 accredited by the ZA Central Registry alone.

18 July 2017
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