Hogan Lovells
To carry out this study, PowerSoft Africa & the Coalition for Digital Africa analysed and surveyed more than 200 managers from various companies and organisations involved in the Internet & domain name industry across Africa. Comparing the data between the 2016 and 2023 studies we can see significant progress in all African countries.
The African Domain Name Space consists of 54 Country Code Top Level Domains, (ccTLDs), such as.ZA (for South Africa),.TN (for Tunisia), and six Internationalised Domain Names, (IDNs), such as.ljzy’r (for Algeria),.mSr for Egypt, and three City TLDs, (.CAPETOWN..DURBAN, and.JOBURG). Since July 2017, Internet users have been able to register domain names using the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) of.AFRICA.
The research shows that by November 2023 the total number domain names registered with African ccTLDs will be just over 4,33 million. This is more than twice the amount in 2016. This significant difference can be attributed to the fact that some of these ccTLDs are often used by malicious third-parties for cybersquatting or other illicit activities, such as.CF in Central African Republic or.GQ in Equatorial Guinea. The study shows that.CO.ZA is the most popular African ccTLD, accounting for 92% of the total number of African domains registered. It also shows that Africans tend to register domains in countries where local hosting and web development sectors have developed enough to create a demand for local domains. .CO.ZA,.Egypt, Mauritius and Nigeria are the top 10 African ccTLDs by volume of domain names. Africans register domains primarily in countries where the local hosting industry and web development sector has developed sufficiently to create demand for local domains, i.e. This is 1.4 million domains, of which approximately 1.2 million are.COM domains.
In the area of internet access, Africa is still behind the global average. The continent has a penetration rate of 43% (29%, in 2016), compared to 68% (50%, in 2016). The difference is even greater between African countries. For example, Eritrea’s penetration rate is only 7% compared to Kenya’s 85%. This is due to the lack of digital infrastructure and high Internet access prices in certain parts of Africa. These figures are not surprising when considering that the average African would need to spend 4% of their monthly income to get as little as 1GB of Internet data per month.
Nonetheless, the number of African domain names has increased as infrastructure rollout has increased in many countries. The authors of the report expect this trend will continue, predicting an average annual growth of 12.4% across the continent.
