The 2023 Africa Domain Name Industry Study, covering 54 countries in Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN’s) African region, has shown that high Internet access costs continue to limit widespread usage, with the average African spending about 4% of their monthly income on 1GB of data – twice the global affordability target.
The study’s goals are to highlight the strengths and opportunities for Africa’s DNS industry, and establish a Trial Observatory for ongoing monitoring of its status and growth.
BREAKING: Nigeria Domain Names [.NG] Registration Surpass 225,000
Techeconomy brings to you key highlights of the report as shared by Coalition for Digital Africa at ICANN80 in Kigali, Rwanda.
1. DNS Growth in Africa
The projected average annual overall growth in the number of domain names across the continent is 12.4%, suggesting significant opportunities for local providers in individual country.
2. Extensive Infrastructure Growth
Over 1.1 million kilometres of terrestrial and submarine fiber cables interconnect the continent, enhancing cross-border communications and internet access.
3. Digital Divide Challenges
Despite infrastructure growth, high Internet access costs continue to limit widespread usage, with the average African spending about 4% of their monthly income on 1GB of data – twice the global affordability target.
4. Domain Name Registration
As of November 2023, there are over 4.33 million domains registered under the African country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) with an additional 1.4 million generic top level domain registrations from African entities.
5. Local Hosting and Content Disparities
A significant concentration of web content and domain hosting remains within only a few countries, underscoring the need for more localized Internet service.
Excerpts:
Nigeria
According to the study, Nigeria moved up to 2nd place and is now two points ahead of Kenya. As with South Africa and Kenya, Nigeria has multiple undersea cables.
The ccTLD is well run, there are now six IXPs and multiple Data Centres. Nigeria’s biggest advantage is its huge population and large economy.
It is, however, heavily reliant on oil revenue, which has taken a battering. Recently its dependence on oil almost crippled the economy in 2020, as the pandemic highlighted the losses to the Federal government’s revenue.
Coming in just after Kenya on the number of ccTLD domains but ahead on gTLD domains, Nigeria also has a high score from its six IXPs.
Despite having good Data Centres, 98% of the websites identified were hosted overseas.
In fact, of the top 6 web hosting companies, only one has a .NG domain name, and all of them host their own websites in the USA or in South Africa.
The latter may be a function of Nigeria’s large population size, or perhaps is driven by avoiding the stigma of the .NG domain and its association with “419” scams.
Google indexes a total of 44.3 million web pages under the .NG domain, significantly up from 16 million
The Nigerian economy has recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic and has gradually seen an increase in nonoil revenue especially from the ICT sector, which contributed almost 16% in 2022.
Nigeria has the highest number of Internet users on the continent.
Meanwhile, the outcomes will help inform the Coalition for Digital Africa of future growth opportunities and development, both locally and regionally, in line with the Coalition’s guiding principles.
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