Ghana Dot Com Limited, a descendant of Network Computer Systems, has become the third company in Africa to be accredited Registrar of Internet domain names in the generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) names registries.
The accreditation awarded by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), therefore, has placed Ghana on the map of Internet management on the continent alongside two other companies; Internet Solutions from South Africa and Kheweul of Senegal.
Ghana Dot Com will now register names into gTLD registries including .com, org, .net, .info and to host websites for these domain names. Domain names are symbolic name references to information resources on the internet commonly known as website that run that run on servers.
A statement copied to the Ghana News Agency on Thursday by Ghana Dot Com said it was expected that the company (Ghana Dot Com) would bring more
people into the community of websites and providers of information services.
Professor Nii Quaynor, Chairman of Ghana Dot Com said in the statement that Africa and in particular Ghana stood to benefit by having an
alternative avenue for acquiring generic domain names closer to them for their personal or business information needs.
"Ghana Dot Com expects to be a multi currency and accept payments in convertible currencies in the region and for example customers in Ghana may pay for services in Ghana cedis and likewise for CFA regions.
"The business venture aims to increase content and transactional web services in Africa by making domain names more readily available in our environment.
"We hope that this venture will present a platform for hosting more localized content and in local languages to develop the African information resource market," Prof. Nii Quaynor said.
He said Ghana Dot Com intended also to be Registrar for country code top level domain (ccTLD) registries in Africa including .GH, .NG and others, which would further grow the domain name market in Africa.
Prof. Quaynor said the lack of financial instruments in Africa had been the principal challenge of registrars, which when managed could boost the information economy.
"Ghana Dot Com looks to its native innovative e-Commerce payment processing e-Cash framework to reach out into the market," he said and indicated that despite the widely held view that content in Africa was poor, Ghana Dot Com was counting on enabling content providers by making names
available and hosting easy.
The Internet technical community, Prof. Quaynor said continued its advancement by working directly in the market and practically building
itself sustaining info-structures.
"Ghana Dot Com will leverage the Internet pioneering expertise of Network Computer System (NCS), in system characterization, integration and e-Commerce as a response," he added.