While the .africa gTLD is expected to benefit the Internet community in the region, not everyone is in agreement with the decision to reserve the .africa name and making it unavailable to everyone.

"Dot Connect Africa reiterates its firm opposition to the plan to include DotAfrica, DotAfrique and DotAfrikia in the List of Reserved Names so as to make these strings unavailable during the new gTLD application process," said a press statement issued by DCA after the AU ministerial communique.

"DCA believes that this is a plan that would make DotAfrica unavailable to other applicants simply based on a special legislative protection that will create an anti-competitive situation and unfairness."

There are questions whether AU has an interest in running .africa but Mpisane said that AU is only interested in making sure that .africa benefits Africa's Internet community.