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ZA Central Registry (ZACR), a South African non-profit organisation, has won the legal right to publicly launch the dotAfrica domain for the promotion of African businesses, people and culture on the Internet. The legal battle, which stretched for almost three years, was between Kenya’s DotConnectAfrica (DCA) and ZACR.

ZACR’s dotAfrica project will now become part of the generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) names for the internet, such as ‘.com’ and ‘.net’. This implies internet names such as, ‘www.financialnigeria.africa’ will be possible to list very soon.

Kenya’s DCA initiated a lawsuit in 2014 contesting the decision of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – a worldwide web administrator – to award the allocation of dotAfrica to ZACR following a bidding process. This resulted in delays to the roll-out of the domain name to the general public. In December 2016, DCA lost its second motion for an initial order to stop ICANN’s decision at a California court, ending the long-drawn legal battle.

"All attempts to stall the public availability of the dotAfrica geographic Top Level Domain (gTLD) have failed and it's now time to create the next chapter in the dotAfrica story,” said Lucky Masilela, ZACR's CEO.

Subject to approval by ICANN, ZACR has announced the tentative date of July 4 for the release of the dotAfrica domain name to the public.

"In technical terms, .Africa is resolving in the root zone…in layperson's terms, dotAfrica will soon be open for business," Masilela added.

According to reports, there will be a sunrise phase for intellectual property rights holders and the land-rush phase for premium name applicants who apply by mid-2017.

ZACR currently manages various ‘.ZA’ second level domains such as ‘co.za’, ‘net.za’, ‘org.za’ and ‘web.za’.