The African Domain Name System Forum (AfDNSF), 2014 was succesfully hosted in Abuja, Nigeria. The presentation of issues by resource persons, feedback from the participants and discussions and deliberations that went on for the three days of the Africa Internet Governance Forum have given rise to the following recommendations on the various issues discussed:

Monetizing Africa’s Top Level Domains

• Creation of more awareness through road shows, one-to-one awareness and other possible means

Registries Business: Growing the African Domain Name (Reseller Friendly TLD Policies)

• Creation of more awareness through road shows, one-to-one awareness and other possible means
• Development of local contents
• Creating viable policies that will be of benefit to the growth of the African Domain Name
• Improving the technicality through training of Africans
• Domains should be better packaged and not over-priced

Reseller: Taxation and Domain Names

• Reduction in tax for resellers as this will lead to a reduction in the cost of registering domain names

TLD Marketing, whose responsibility is it?

• All stakeholders should be made aware that they all have the responsibilities to market TLDs

Registry Payment Solutions

• E-payment and cash payment should run in parallel and not just e-payment or cash payment alone

At the end of the Forum, the participants expressed their sincere gratitude to the hosts, sponsors, people and government of Nigeria for a successful hosting of the AfDNS Forum in Abuja, Nigeria and the organisaers expressed their warm and sincere gratitude to all the participants from Nigeria and outside Nigeria as well as the remote participants.

It has been brought to ICANN's attention that some online entities have attempted to sell fraudulent "certificates", which they claim are required to protect generic top-level domain names. The perpetuators of this scam threaten registrants on the protection service with the objective of securing a fee from the registrant. The "certificates" look official and include an unauthorized use of the ICANN logo.Please note that ICANN does not issue certificates to registrants and does not collect fees from registrants directly.ICANN is currently investigating these cases and advises registrants who encounter similar incidents to report to ICANN immediately via an email to Contractual Compliance at compliance@icann.org.ICANN recommends that any individual or legal entity wishing to register a domain name under a generic top-level domain name to do so using an ICANN-accredited registrar. More information, including a list of all current ICANN-accredited registrars can be found here: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrars-0d-2012-02-25-enAbout ICANNICANN's mission is to ensure a stable, secure and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer – a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN coordinates these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet. ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet's unique identifiers. ICANN doesn't control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn't deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet's naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet. For more information please visit: www.icann.org.For additional information about domain names, please visit: https://www.icann.org/resources/files/domain-names-beginners-guide-2010-12-06-en

Gambia’s Ministry of Information and Communication Infrastructure (MOICI) under the African Union Commission (AUC) African Internet Exchange Services (AXIS) Support Project has launched the country’s first Internet Exchange Point (IXP) – the Serrekunda Internet Exchange Point (SIXP).
The SIXP project was undertaken in collaboration with local telecoms operators and internet service providers (ISPs), and will keep internet traffic local and reduce reliance on costly international bandwidth.
It was officially launched by the AU commissioner for energy and infrastructure Dr Elham Mahmood Ahmed Ibrahim and Gambia’s works minister Bala Garba Jahumpa, who is also in charge of the MOICI.
“National bandwidth had increased by more than 300 per cent since the commissioning of the ACE Submarine Cable in December 2012. However, it was still critical to establish an exchange point to minimise the burden on unnecessary international bandwidth being utilised by our local traffic, which is expensive,” Jahumpa said.
Gambia is the fourth country in Africa supported by the African Union Commission to establish an IXP.
Ibrahim said: “Africa is currently paying overseas carriers to exchange intra-continental traffic on our behalf. This is both costly, as well as an inefficient way of handling inter-country exchange of internet traffic.”

ICANN has appointed Kuo-Wei Wu as the ICANN Board of Director's liaison for the NTIA IANA Functions' Stewardship Transition Coordination Group. Kuo Wu has extensive experience in ICT technology, information security, Internet governance and Internet policy, and previously served as Chairman of the now-defunct Board IANA Committee.Additionally, ICANN has appointed Elise Gerich, Vice President of IANA & Technical Operations, as the staff expert to provide information to the Coordination Group as needed.