In its submission regarding the Joint Partnership Agreement between ICANN and the Department of Commerce, which expires in September this year, the Africa ICANN discussion group -- comprising registry operators, senior government officials and other interested parties -- says that Africa is set to benefit from maintenance of the status quo.
The region has benefitted from ICANN's experience in many ways, including the development of African internetworking groups and growing participation with ICANN's policy development processes, according to a statement from the Africa discussion group.
"The Internet's sound and effective coordination should continue to be operated along the criteria and procedures that have given to the Internet its stability and secure operation," said the statement from the Africa group.
In performing its function as the custodian and coordinator of critical resources including domain names and IP addresses, ICANN has constantly strived to be open, transparent and accountable, according to a separate statement from Pierre Dandjinou, who has represented Africa within ICANN.
"The JPA and the subsequent MoUs have certainly provided the framework for coordination of activities and made ICANN international," said the statement.
The document, submitted to the National Telecommunication Agency, was triggered by another paper submitted by Esam M. Abulkhirat, a senior ICT policy officer at the African Union Commission, that criticized Africa's preparedness to deal with changes at ICANN.
"African countries in general have not yet adequately embraced and restructured public bureaucracies in response to the demands of the information society; many governments are still hierarchical and lacking accountability and transparency," said Abulkhirat.
DNS management must not be fully disconnected from the current U.S.-DoC oversight, he noted in the paper, which reflected his personal views. "There must be U.S. Government involvement in this process and with ICANN in general at least for the coming 4 years," he said.
"Africans shouldn't find themselves in a situation where ICANN is fully liberalized or privatized; without a proper planning that will ensure equal and balance participation of all countries and ensure that those plans do not undermine the stable and effective oversight of the internet DNS system," said Abulkhirat.
At the World Summit on Information Society in 2003, most African countries seemed convinced that the International Telecommunications Union would be a better manager of the Internet, but that view has changed.
The international nature of operations at ICANN formed the basis for arguments by those opposing ICANN at the WSIS in 2003 and in 2005. It was felt that ICANN was susceptible to control by the U.S. government and did not incorporate the views of poor countries as much as ITU would.
In the past few years, however, ICANN has engaged in more outreach to Africa, working to raise awareness within government and ICT circles about its role in Internet management.