The Sixth Africa DNS Forum to take place in Cotonou, Benin www.dnsforum.africa

Listers,

On 3-5 July, the sixth Africa DNS Forum <dnsforum.africa/> will
take place under the theme “Building a Sustainable Domain Name Industry in
Africa” in Cotonou, Benin. The Forum is co-organized by the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Africa Top Level
Domains Organization (AfTLD <aftld.org/#&panel1-1>), and AfRegistrar
<afregistrar.org/>. It will be hosted by the Regulatory Authority of
Communications Electronics in Benin (ARCEP <www.arcep.fr/>). This
year\’s forum follows on the success of the preceding forums, held in
Durban, South Africa (2013), Abuja, Nigeria (2014), Nairobi, Kenya (2015),
Marrakech, Morocco (2016), and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2017).

Over the past six years, the Africa DNS Forum has become an important
annual event, bringing together regional players and world experts in the
DNS field to share experiences, best practices, and provide updates on
developments in the domain industry. This year\’s three-day event builds on
the takeaways from the previous one, and addresses key issues that directly
concern the regional industry. Among this year\’s topics are data protection
and privacy, registry and registrar platform development, Internationalized
Domain Names and Universal Acceptance initiatives in Africa, and investment
opportunities in the Africa DNS industry.

Moreover, on 6 July, the African Internet community will celebrate 20 years
of Internet Governance in Africa <internethistory.africa/>.
Representatives of ICANN leadership as well as the Internet pioneers of
Africa will come together for the celebrations in Benin, twenty years after
the first African Internet Governance Forum was held in Benin in 1998. The
anniversary will be marked by a day-long event themed “An Efficient
Governance of Internet in the Service of Africa Development.”
Representatives of ICANN, Internet Society (ISOC), local governmental
authorities, United Nations Development Programme, Internet pioneers of
Africa, and more will be partaking in the event. For more information on
the event, visit www.internethistory.africa.

The first week of July will allow the regional Internet stakeholders to
celebrate and reflect back upon the journey of the Internet in Africa, and
discuss ways to improve the Internet penetration rates, online business
opportunities, and participation in the global Internet Governance across
the continent.

We look forward to both events that will give us the opportunity to once
again convene with our African stakeholders.

For registration and more information on the Africa DNS Forum, visit
www.dnsforum.africa.
Kindly note that you can participate remotely.

Best Regards