The new top-level domain .africa, which could have been delegated as early as this week, now faces potentially months of delay. The registry agreement for .africa was signed by ICANN and the South African ZA Central Registry at the recent ICANN meeting in Singapore. However, another company vying for the domain, DotConnectAfrica, requested an independent review of the decision in the fall of 2013, and an arbitration panel has put a hold on the process until it can reach a final decision.
ICANN’s formal reason for rejecting the application filed by DotConnectAfrica is convincing: the applicant lacks support from governments and local authorities, which is required in the case of the domains that contain geographical names. However, the real problem is that DotConnectAfrica’s request for an independent review was not granted. Back in April 2013, ICANN’s Board of Directors adopted a resolution to form a standing committee to review such cases. The committee was to consist of nine arbitrators who would sit on arbitration panels to review claims and complaints.
The committee was never formed. The independent arbitration panel that reviewed the complaint filed by DotConnectAfrica criticized ICANN for failing to follow its own bylaws. But the ruling is unlikely to change the future of the .africa domain, which will most likely be delegated to ZA Central Registry after a delay of several months.
ICANN’s inability to follow its own decisions reflects badly on the corporation at a time of debate about whether the online community, whose interests ICANN is supposed to represent, is ready to take over control of the DNS root zone.
