ICANN published on its official website a study of the state of the domain industry in Africa - 2023 Africa Domain Name Industry Study. It was commissioned by ICANN from PowerSoft Africa and the Coalition for Digital Africa. The study was timed to coincide with the 80th ICANN meeting, which ended in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. While working on it, specialists from PowerSoft Africa and the Coalition for Digital Africa studied a huge amount of statistical materials, and also conducted a survey of more than 200 managers of various companies and organizations in the Internet and domain industry from all regions of Africa.
The previous similar study was carried out in 2016, and the new data demonstrates the significant progress made by African countries. Almost all coastal African countries with the exception of Eritrea today have 1-2 connections to transcontinental fiber optic cables laid along the ocean floor. As of mid-2022, the continent also had over 1.1 million kilometers of terrestrial fiber optic cables installed. The average Internet penetration rate in African countries is 43% today, up from 29% in 2016.
At the same time, Africa still lags behind global values. Thus, the average global Internet penetration level is now estimated at 68%. The gap between African countries themselves is also striking: while in Eritrea the average penetration rate is only 7%, in Kenya it is 85%. An analysis of 644 million African Internet pages indexed by Google shows that two-thirds of them come from just 10 of the continent's 54 countries - South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, Tunisia, Tanzania, Algeria, Mauritius and Sao Tome and Principe. And all 33 of the lowest positions in the world ranking of the Network Readiness Index (NRI) are occupied by African countries.
One of the main problems for the countries of the continent is the high cost of connection. Today, the average African needs to spend 4% of his monthly income to get 1GB of Internet data per month (barely enough to watch 4 minutes of video per day). It is the high cost of connection, as well as insufficiently developed infrastructure and the fact that the majority of the continent’s residents are limited to only mobile access to the network, that are the main factors hindering the development of the domain industry. According to ICANN statistics, of the 1,122 domain registrars accredited by the corporation, only 12 are from Africa - 3 from South Africa, 2 each from Morocco and Nigeria, and one each from Burundi, Ghana, Mauritius, Senegal and Tunisia.
As of November 2023, there are just over 4.33 million domain names registered in African country codes. Over 1.4 million more domain names are registered by individuals and legal entities on the African continent in various generic top-level domains. The full text of the study (204 pages, language – English) can be found on the ICANN website.
