[governance] Re: ICANN Accredits First Registrar in Senegal

Wed May 16 11:04:42 EDT 2007

Ok, now here is, not my side of the story, but my perspective.

When Stephane, objecting to what I wrote, says: "kheweul.com is
NOT the second registrar in Africa, there are many others. It is
the second *ICANN* registrar (for gTLD) which is quite
different." And that's exactly my point! First, the message I
forwarded here was initially sent to the GNSO council which is
the ICANN policy body that deal with gTLD-related policies, so
it is obviously part of ICANN community. Furthermore, I think
the announcement forwarde was clear enough that this the second
ICANN accredited registrar. So Stephane's objection may help
some readers who have missed those details to understatnd that,
but is in my view irrelevant as a *correction* to what I wrote,
which unfortunately the way he seemed to present it.

Seconf you all know that a Whois query provides you with the
contact details of the registrant of the domain name. Not
necessary the actual entity who owns the name or any business
that is conducted behind or with it. So the Whois data doesn't
even tell us where Kheweul as legal entity has been incorporated
and where are its headquarters. What I know about Kheweul (the
business, not the domain name) is that Mouhamet Diop at least
part of the owners and managers. He's Senegalease and live in
Dakar. (Also note, without any assumption whatsoever about the
present case: Maybe thanks to globalization, there are many
Senegaleses, Malians, Kenyans, etc. around the world who set up
a business entity far from their country for diverse reason,
such as the paperwork and management is easier there, while
doing business in their country and still have some level of
control over the proceedings and investments.) Mouhamet is 
known by ICANN for having sit on the board in the past, so you
may say this (in addition to his hardwork) made it possible, but
other than that, you may want.

Last point: I have never meant to say the business model implied
by ICANN registry/registrar processes are perfect. For the time
being they are what they are, and I am indeed a strong believer
that Africans, just as anybody else, need to be present at all
levels of the chain. Now some people think (and I wonder if that
is not Stephane's perspective) that improving the economies and
people's life in Africa only takes, or mostly requires,
development aid and state action/intervention. This, and only
this (especially the aid part) makes me think Development will
feature among the longest lasting political scandal of the
humankind. I believe in genuinely respecting people, making
large room to their perception of their own problems and in the
crafting of possible solutions, contradicting them when
necessary until a true conversation takes place, letting them
try eventually solutions of their own and fail or succeed at
reality check and then resume the conversation, and also letting
them win when they just deserve it (like the Burkinabe, Malian
and Beninese cotton on the global market) without tinkering with
the rules just for the sake of keeping the winners always on the
same side, and say, "Oh well, we'll help you with public aid to
development"!

This may seem out of context to you, but the reason I'm saying
this is, if there are Africans who want to be ICANN registrars,
why not? If by transferring money to North American registries
or ICANN is an empediment for a registrar to make profit, then
there wouldn't be registrars not even in North America (money
that I make being transferred to someone else in my country is
still no longer my money.) I think for any registrar to succeed
in Africa, it must come up with some little innovative ways to
do business. And my hope is a privately-owned ICANN-accredited
registrar may well end up being a sort of proof-of-concept of
alternative business models that would shed a light on the
current assumptions in vogue within ICANN. This might lead to
more trust in the feasability of an African gTLD registry (so
yes, ICANN-contracted! and BTW, I believe the gTLD space is
global both from provider and demand sides; it doesn't have to
remain North American mainly) and to a more amenable set of
criteria for ICANN's registry market entry. Meanwhile, that
might also teach some good lessons to the ccTLD
registrars/managers whose problems are not only due to their
potential clients preferring to register .com or .org, etc., and
as a result, the whole landscape might change for better. That's
a more dynamic view I think.

Mawaki

--- Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer at internatif.org> wrote:

> On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 12:27:34PM +0200,
>  Nyangkwe Agien Aaron <nyangkweagien at gmail.com> wrote 
>  a message of 58 lines which said:
> 
> > You being too technical in your pronouncements.
> 
> Rereading the whole thread, there was only *one* technical
> issue, in a
> post-scriptum. This issue is now obsolete (they fixed the name
> servers).
> 
> > I want to write an article for the local audience on this
> > achievement by our friend in Senegal.
> 
> He may not be in Senegal. The whois output for kheweul.com
> shows an
> address "1501 4th Avenue, Los Angeles, CA", a city far away
> from
> Senegal... Do not take everything written by ICANN at face
> value.
> 
> > What does the whole process entails, who is gaining what for
> which
> > outcome?.  On a deeper note whic is the other African
> country to
> > have that process and why according to you is Africa
> trailing
> > behind?
> 
> The important things to keep in mind, IMHO:
> 
> * the whole thing is a non-event, mostly ICANN's public
> relations
> 
> * some african ccTLD have a registry/registrar system so
> kheweul.com
> is NOT the second registrar in Africa, there are many others.
> It is
> the second *ICANN* registrar (for gTLD) which is quite
> different. You
> can get, as examples, the list of Ivory Coast registrars at
> http://www.nic.ci/ and the list of Kenya registrars at
>
http://www.kenic.or.ke/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=48.
> 
> * links of kheweul.com with Africa seems to be quite weak. On
> their
> home page (http://www.kheweul.com/), you can see they sell
> ".com",
> ".org", ".fr", ".be", even ".cn" but not one african TLD, not
> even
> ".sn". Besides, none of their nameservers is in Africa.
> 
> * the interesting discussion is wether african providers
> should
> promote US-based gTLD or local ccTLD. This is a complex issue:
> with
> the US-based gTLD, a part of the money flows from Africa to
> the USA,
> which is not a good idea. On the other hand, some african
> ccTLD are
> badly managed, very policy-heavy (lots of bureaucracy to
> register a
> domain), very expensive and sometimes very poor technically.
> (Others
> are quite good like ".ke" already mentioned.)
> 
> Currently, it is a chicken-and-egg problem: many africans do
> not use
> the african ccTLD because of the reasons above. So, there is
> little
> incentive to improve them and so users do not use them and so
> on.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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