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DotConnectAfrica: ICANN 42 Dakar: Meet the Yes2dotAfrica Campaign in Senegal!

DotConnectAfrica is delighted to inform its Pan-African constituency, and indeed, its significant community of stakeholders and avid supporters of the forth-coming ICANN Conference for Developing countries to be held in Dakar, Senegal from 23 October to 28 October 2011.

This will be another historic ICANN meeting, following the formal approval of the new generic Top Level Domains Program by the ICANN Board during the “ICANN Oscars” in Singapore in June 2011. It is also the last ICANN meeting before the commencement of the application process for the new gTLDs.  For DCA, it is the last meeting to rest our case for a new Top Level Domain name for Africa after six years of traversing the continent saying “Yes to DotAfrica”.

DCA intends to participate at ICANN meeting in Dakar and lend its voice and support to the proceedings.  DCA’s enormous pride and happiness in the forthcoming ICANN-42 Dakar meeting is two-fold:

First, the ICANN-42 meeting is taking place in an African country, and DCA’s principal interest is applying for the DotAfrica gTLD.   It is therefore an important recognition for Africa as one of the key geographic regions of ICANN.    Thus, the ICANN Dakar meeting promises to focus positive attentions not only on Africa, but also on DCA as the chief proposer of the DotAfrica initiative.

DCA has singularly championed and clarified the DotAfrica gTLD initiative over several years of painstaking hard work, and in the process, obtained key supportive endorsements for it from various stakeholders]

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Second, DotConnectAfrica is also one of the official sponsors of the ICANN-42 meeting in Dakar. Again, DotConnectAfrica (DCA) is proud of its long corporate association with ICANN, and has historically supported, and consistently participated in official ICANN events; having previously sponsored the ICANN meeting in Brussels in 2010 where the recommendations of the generic Names Supporting Organizations (gNSO) on the new gTLDs were adopted by the ICANN Board.

DotConnectAfrica’s involvement in ICANN meetings has therefore been consistent and stead-fast, and again re-confirms DCA’s long-standing and active commitment to the multi-stakeholder Internet Governance model.  We have been attending nearly every ICANN meeting for the last 6 years: contributing to the new gTLDs debate, visibly advancing new gTLD and also Africa’s concerns and positions on issues of Internet Governance at ICANN and to other global publics.  In the process, we widely promoted the Yes2DotAfrica Campaign and networked with the ICANN global community of stakeholders to get their valuable insight into issues of importance to the African Internet Community. DCA’s participatory leadership in these matters is unquestionable.

The ICANN Dakar meeting coming at this time, DotAfrica will be uppermost in everyone’s mind and DCA intends to use this opportunity to again reach out to a larger target audience whilst focusing on building the necessary consensus and the invaluable partnerships that will further reinforce the Yes2dotafrica Campaign so as to make the DotAfrica vision a reality.

DCA will forever remain proud of its vigorous campaign in support of the ICANN programme for the introduction of new gTLDs and its complementary successful campaign and advocacy for DotAfrica for the benefit of Africa.

The DotConnectAfrica Organization therefore joins the Government and people of Senegal in welcoming the global internet community to Dakar the Land of the Teranga and Leopold Sedar Senghor’s ‘Negritude’, and to Africa, the home of DotAfrica.

Press Release: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs053/1102516344150/archive/1107830234264.html

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