African gTLDs Promotion, free domains if you qualify

The four African gTLDs are currently in an exclusive promotion with Registry Africa and ZA Central Registry who are the operators for these domains. This campaign is exclusive to affiliated, ICANN Accredited Registrars only. DNS Africa Ltd is a participating Registrar and we would like to extend this invitation to all users on our Gateway platform.

What are the campaign details?

Any African based domain name holder will be able to register the corresponding domain name in .africa, .capetown, .durban and .joburg should it be available. If you own a particular co.za for example, you would be able to claim the corresponding .africa, .capetown, .durban and .joburg domain for a zero registration cost. This also extends to a .com, .net, .org or co.tz, co.bw, etc as long as the Registrant (domain owner) is ‘African based’. 

There are some checks which need to be passed before such a domain name can be claimed;

- The domain must be available in one of the four gTLDs above.
- The domain must not be in the Reserved Name List (RNL) waiting to be claimed by another participating Reseller. 
- The domain must not be a restricted name.

Premium domains are included in the campaign so if you own 117.co.za you can claim 117.africa if it is still available. This represents at least a $200 saving on premium domains alone for your customers.

So….it's free, what's the catch?

The registration will be free however the renewals are not. The really good news is that the renewal fees will be charged at a drastically reduced price. The new pricing for these four African gTLDs will come into effect from 1 July 2022 and will cost $4.60 excl. VAT for a renewal and any new registrations (creates). This represents a saving of $4.90 for the three city gTLDs and a massive $9.40 for .africa at the current pricing (https://gateway.africa/pricing) on creates and renewals.

You will also need to motivate your participation in this campaign and indicate how you will promote this offer to your customers and how you will ensure a best effort towards a renewal after the first year. There is a significant cost which we will be subsiding for this campaign in the first year and we hope you will help us to get the retention rate on these domains as high as possible

How does it work?

As a first step you have to sign a simple MOU to formalise your participation in this campaign. You then evaluate your own list of customers and their domains and submit a Domain Name List (DNL) to us for review. We will then submit this DNL for review to the Registry Operator who will then run a diagnostic and import tool for this list. A report will then be made available to indicate which domains were successful and which were not. This report will be needed by you to set up your campaign and offers to customers who are qualified to redeem a domain from the approved DNL

Time limit

All the domains imported into the RNL will have an expiry date set. Redemptions on these domains will only be available for a period of 90 days. This date will be set when the approved DNL is imported into the RNL.

Exclusivity

Only you will be able to claim the domain in the RNL within the redemption period of 90 days. This registration must be done on the Gateway platform and cannot be redeemed with another participating Registrar.

Minimum DNL count

If you want to participate you will need to submit a minimum of 100 domain names for consideration.

Next steps

If you would like to participate (we certainly hope you do) simply send us a support request from the Portal. We will then prepare the basic MOU and send that for your review ASAP. We would like to be a part of Africa Rising!

What we have seen to date from participating Resellers

Some of our resellers have reported a keen interest from new customers wanting to migrate their existing domains and hosting to be able to qualify for the promotion which they are running. We did not anticipate this positive outcome but welcome it nonetheless as a true value add which is recognised. Many customers also can’t believe that the domain is available and offered for FREE to them for the first year. Quite a few support requests are logged querying this offer so be sure to make this clear in your marketing collateral should you proceed with ‘next steps’ mentioned above.

Posted by Louis Ferreira
Louis is the Product Manager for DNS Africa Ltd.