Saturday, November 5, 2011

Hamza Aboulfeth: The 25 year old Moroccan who built Africa’s fifth ICANN Accredited Registrar

Genious Communications based in Morocco is the first ICANN Accredited Registrar in North Africa

Quotes to take home: "But when I think about it, we became accredited today not because of the 6 months (accreditation) process but the 6 years of real hard work before that process even began." Hamza Aboulfeth

Hamza is 25 and established Genious Communications, the fifth ICANN accredited registrar in Africa, and the first in North Africa. Here is his inspirational story on the journey to becoming ICANN Accredited in his own words as delivered during the ICANN meeting in Dakar:

I first contacted ICANN 6 years ago in 2005. I was 19 years old back then and they were very kind and interested to have an ICANN accredited registrar in North Africa because there was still no one back then. When they sent me the requirements and all the elements we needed to get accredited, I was like wow! There was no way I could get this accreditation some day. But here we are six years later with a lot of hard work we have made it possible.

We got an ICANN Accreditation in June 2011. That was quite a memorable day and special achievement for me and the rest of the team. Back in January 2011 we felt ready to start the process as we met all the requirements to become ICANN accredited registrar. We had the help of a third party company for registrar consultancy and they offered the back end as well which we needed once we got the accreditation. And simultaneously I was in contact with the registrar liaison officer from the Belgian office of ICANN , a very nice guy who was there when we needed him.

It meant a lot to have an insider giving you precious the advice and especially helping you with all the paperwork. It was not easy and as a Moroccan company we faced a few difficulties. The first one was all the paperwork. The application that needed to be fulfilled in the technical backend, as I said was taken care of by a third party consulting who was also very kind and positive. And i think that the more support you could get, the more people who you could get that trust you with your ideas, the more you are confident about yourself.

The second one was the $70,000 that we had to demonstrate in cash in our bank account. And finally the $1 million commercial liability insurance, $500,000 for ICANN and $1million that we needed later for .ORG (PIR) . But when I think about it, we became accredited today not because of the 6 months process but the 6 years of real hard work before that process even began. And as I said earlier, I first wanted to become an ICANN registrar 6 years ago and let me tell you that during that time we were not just crossing our fingers but working hard to make it possible. We’d began as simple resellers of one of the largest registrars out there with over eleven million domains and we were hoping we could get to the next stage some day and become as big as our providers. And now we are a registrar, we work twice as hard to offer our clients and resellers the best services they could ever expect. Yes ICANN!

Best Regards,
Hamza Aboulfeth

Register Your Domains today with Genious Communications.

2 comments:

  1. ICANN Accreditation was a natural reward for all these years of hard work.

    I had the chance to see Hamza's work and projects for domain names and hosting business, and i can tell you that this is only the beguining ... he's gonna rock the hell on Internet for the next 5 years and all i wish him is GOOD LUCK, he totally deserve it.

    Young entrepreneurs should take example.

    Taher ALAMI (STAR)
    Faithful Customer

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  2. Quite an inspiring and formidable undertaking for this young man. There are more African companies with tenfold the resources that Hamza had! They could easily build more ICANN Accredited Registrars in Africa, all that's needed is this kind of passion and commitment to develop one's homeland. Bravo Hamza

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