Ghanaian Government to take control of .GH ccTLD Registry

 The National Information Technology Agency (NITA), the Information Technology Implementing Agency of the Ministry of Communications has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Ghana Dot Com, a successor company of Network Computer Systems Limited.

Ghana Dot Com (GDC), the current manager of the .gh domain namespace, is to begin the process of transfer of the management of the namespace to Government.

This is in line with the Electronic Transaction Act 2008 (ACT 772) which empowers the Minister of Communications to hold the name space and manage it in trust for the people of Ghana.

NITA has been empowered to ensure the implementation and enforcement of the provisions of the Electronic Transactions Act (ETA), and as part of its mandate will be managing the .gh namespace on behalf of the Minister of Communications, Ghana.

The signing of the MOU puts NITA in a position to begin plans to implement the re-development programme of the .gh registry. NITA’s plan is to implement a world class domain registry solution that will make domain registration available online and accessible to all citizens and businesses in Ghana.

Since June 2011, NITA has been going through a process to procure world-class registry software and will soon conclude the process. As part of the preparation to manage the domain space, NITA will begin a local Internet community industry stakeholder forum prescribed by ETA to discuss the general management and policy of the domain namespace in February 2012.

NITA has also beefed up its team with domain name business expertise to help it manage the domain namespace efficiently.

The current manager of the namespace, GDC, has agreed by the MOU to support NITA by ensuring a smooth transfer of zone data and will not contest re-delegation of the domain space by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which is the global body that manages the domain name systems, including country code top level domains (ccTLD).

Ghana Dot Com has managed the .gh domain namespace since 1995 and has confirmed in the MOU its willingness to support NITA technically and administratively in the running of the registry after the re-delegation.

NITA was established by Act 771 and passed by the Parliament of Ghana in December, 2008 and is the Government Agency responsible for the implementation of e-Government.

NITA is the ICT implementation arm of the Ministry of Communications and is tasked with the objectives of regulating the provision of information communications technology, ensuring the provision of quality information communications technology, promoting standards of efficiency in ICT and ensuring high quality of ICT services.

Essentially, NITA’s responsibilities include executing the third component of the e-Ghana project, ensuring the integration of ICT into government business processes, to achieve greater efficiency and effective service delivery to citizens, ensuring significant cost reduction in the provision and maintenance of ICT infrastructure and services by leveraging economies of scale (Shared ICT Services).

It would also ensure accessibility and convenience of Government services by leveraging ICTs, ensuring the implementation and enforcement of the provisions of the Electronic Transactions Act 2008 and implementing and adoption of Digital Signature technology by Government \

Source
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Top Webhosting Companies in Ghana

Ghana is yet another vibrant African market. While the Ghanaian ccTLD .GH has been under-performing in the recent past, the .GH namespace underwent a few reforms in the past year and African Domain Names team will be monitoring the progress in the West African nation’s ccTLD namespace. Webhosting is a very vibrant business in Ghana and Oluniyi’ David Ajao’s Web4Africa rules the Ghanaian web hosting marketplace with 64% of the market share. Continuing with our tracking of websites hosted in Africa in the gTLDs namespace (.com .net .info .org ) Here are Ghana’s Top 24 Web Hosting Companies:

Rank	Hosting Company	Market Share	Total Domains
1	Web4Africa.com	64.7974 %	4749
2	Kitnes.com	6.2901 %	461
3	AfricaHostway.com	3.9160 %	287
4	DarrelConceptsGhana.com	3.4520 %	253
5	Amenfis.com	2.2923 %	168
6	NetRegimeHost.com	2.0194 %	148
7	IntegrityPlex.com	1.6919 %	124
8	WebsiteGhana.com	1.6510 %	121
9	CyterraSolutions.com	1.1188 %	82
10	MatrixSpin.net	1.0370 %	76
11	3DGhana.com	1.0370 %	76
12	TeleDataICT.com.gh	1.0233 %	75
13	AfroIntel.com	0.9278 %	68
14	WebsiteAfrica.com	0.8869 %	65
15	RosevConsult.com	0.8732 %	64

Ghana Domains: The rebirth of .gh domain names

This post is a reblog from the DavidAjao.com blog

.gh is the country code Top-Level Domain name (cc-TLD) for the Republic of Ghana.
Introduced in 1995, it is currently managed by a private company in Accra Ghana. This company sponsored the .gh domain with ICANN (the international body for managing domains) and currently serves as the registry and registrar, simultaneously.
Although .gh is intended for use by entities in Ghana, it is poorly patronized due to poor awareness on the part of the populace, high pricing of domain registration and the avoidable bureaucracy on the part of the current registry.

A snapshot of .gh registry's website. It has not been updated for 5 years.

.gh has gone through years of difficulties and all domain management is currently done manually by the registry. It doesn’t help that a .com.gh goes for at least $42.66 from the .gh registry while one can register a .com for as low as $12.
To be fair, most other African domains have been in this poor state at various stages in the past but many have since reformed and are currently growing at blazing speed. These are a few examples of the African country domain systems that are currently world-class: .ke (Kenya), .tz (Tanzania), .cm (Cameroon), .ng (Nigeria), .mu (Mauritius), .na (Namibia), .za (South Africa), .so (Somalia) etc.
.za (South Africa) is peculiar because although it is semi-automated, it is currently the largest domain system in Africa by far, with well over 500,000 domains registered. No other African country domain comes close.
.so (Somalia) is even more peculiar because the country is essentially a failed state, yet it has a world-class domain registry – never mind that the .so registry managed by a private Japanese company on behalf of the government of Somalia. At least, the domain system is fully automated. I was able to register a .so domain for a client a few weeks ago with a few clicks of the mouse.

.GH Domain Reform

The good news is that the .gh domain system is currently under-going a reform. In August 2010, the Government of Ghana set-up an organization named National Information Technology Agency (NITA) whose mandate includes setting-up a new .gh domain name registry.
I was privileged to attend the 5th Annual African ccTLD Event in April 2011 here in Accra, where a NITA member shared the progress and time-line of the .gh domain reform. He concluded by hinting that the new .gh system would go live before the end of 2011.
It is safe to assume that the new .gh domain registry would be a world-class & fully automated registry that would accredit independent .gh domain registrars. With the right policies, .gh can still regain lost grounds in Ghana’s internet arena.
It is estimated that there are close to 3 million Internet users in Ghana. Ghana is home to the first Internet Service Provider in West Africa and has a population of over 24 million people.