The DotConnectAfrica (DCA), one of the organizations that have expressed interest to implement and manage “.africa” gTLD, has opposed plans to include “DotAfrica,” “DotAfrique” and “DotAfriqiya” top level internet domains in the List of Reserved Names, a move that would make the strings unavailable during the ICANN’s new gTLD application process in February 2012.

In a commentary posted on the DCA website in reaction to an article published in ComputerWorld Kenya, DCA states that: “The proposal to include DotAfrica gTLD in the List of Reserved Names is a tactic to make this string and similar strings in any language to be unavailable in this ICANN gTLD round so as to give special legislative protection that will benefit the AU, and give it extraordinary powers to separately negotiate and delegate these names outside the ICANN programme.”

The DCA post in reaction to the article which DCA claims creates makes the impression that “the ministerial meeting agreed that the .africa gTLD should be reserved” which means“that organizations that want to bid to manage it must be sanctioned by the AU” and that “ICANN’s new gTLD application process provides for countries and regions with interest in certain names to reserve them.”

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