Wanjiku has an interesting post on the involvement of ICANN in Africa and Africa’s involvement within ICANN:

But how? According to Rod Beckstrom, 90 percent of ICANN contributions come from North America, so that may be the reason why we have 3 offices in the US and none in Africa.

That makes sense; if Africa does not contribute anything, how will the office be supported? So, for Africa to be on level terms, then we must also be willing to contribute, but am not sure how when our registry operations are still manual.

…

Yes, its good to have geographical representations but we also need to start bringing something on the table and contributing to the debate more than we do currently.

She also has something to say about the cost of .ke domains:

I have been accused of ripping Kenic and their policies on .ke; I pay Ksh 3000 about $ 40 for my domain, which I consider high. Yes. maybe I may be harping on the cost issue a bit but that has been the feeling of many people who have contributed via twitter and other forums.

…

Michuki’s argument is very clear that if we grow the value added services, then the cost of the domain is not the issue; make it worth the while and people will spend. If local electronic commerce is developed, just like the way mobile phones have grown, people will find it easy and effective to conduct business online and so long as returns are guaranteed, then cost will not be an issue per se.

… (on the other hand…)

Lets examine the numbers…according the a recent economic survey, there are about 50,000 businesses in Kenya – all the way from KQ, KCB….to the small scale SMMEs….that’s 50,000…assume 5% of internet users (i.e. abt 5 million) want a .co.ke for whatever reason….and 5% is really stretching it…given a good chunk (say 50%) are students/young people/job seekers/etc doing FB, SN, IM, email, etc…. …anyway, thats 250,000 users. Lets say its 2.5% that is 125,000 plus 50,000 (and again we are assuming even that small chips shop on Ronald Ngala gets a domain…) – 175,000 x US$2 = US$ 350,000 @ ROE 75 = 26.2 million…