Industry ICT | Founded 1988 | |
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Type non profit organisation | ||
The ZA Central Registry (ZACR), formerly known as UniForum SA, is a non-profit organisation established in 1988 and operates various second-level domains (SLD's) in South Africa. The ZA Central Registry is the administrator of the South African zones such as “co.za” and “web.za”. Their offices are based in Midrand, South Africa.
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The ZACR, in partnership with the Africa Union Commission (AUC), is the applicant for the dotAfrica domain in ICANN's new Top-level domain program. The ZACR has also partnered with the ZA Domain Name Authority (ZADNA), the South African Domain Name regulator, to implement the dotJoburg, dotCapetown, and dotDurban Top-level domains (TLDs).
History
The ZA Central Registry was established as a non-profit company in 1988 under the name of UniForum S.A. The organization's goal was the promotion of open standards systems and related hardware, software applications and standards. Internet Service Provider Association (ISPA) assigned to Uniforum the responsibility of administering the “co.za” domain name space. This was because it was seen as not only having the technical skills and resources to do so, but also committed to neutrality and unity of purpose. The registry started with just 400 registered domains. The ZA Central Registry currently boasts over 920 000 Co.Za domain name registrations, which is over 95% of the total registrations in the “.za” ccTLD. This has thus made the registry by far the largest domain name registry on the African continent.
The ZACR Board currently consists of the following executive and non-executive directors:
Llewellyn Jones (Chair),
Duncan Martin,
Hasmukh Gajjar,
Xoliswa Kakana,
Busisiwe Mabuza,
Dominic Cull,
Mavuso Msimang,
Lucky Masilela (CEO),
Jannie Labuschagne (CFO).
ZA Central Registry has between 20-30 employees, including some of the board members. Lucky Masilela is the Chief Executive Officer.
Projects
The registry recently signed four registry operator contracts with ICANN at its Singapore meeting in April 2014, which officially appoints the ZACR as the accredited ICANN registry to manage the administration function for “.joburg”, “.capetown”, “.durban” and “.africa”.
Web.za-is a generic top level domain which is now being administered by ZACR. This means that accredited registrars are now able to register names in Web.Za. This .ZA 2nd level domain was re launched by ZADNA, under ZA Central Registry’s operation. Web.Za will take domain name registrations on the same basis as co.za: no eligibility requirements, open to domain name applications by South Africans and non-South Africans. The re-launch allows for protection of trademarks, starting with a limited sunrise and land rush processes.
.Africa(dotAfrica)- is the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) for the African continent. The application was submitted with the endorsement and support of the African Union Commission (AUC), individual African governments, regional governmental agencies and organisations. The .Africa project has received widespread support from the African community at large.
.Cities- ZACR in partnership with ZADNA and the support of the South African Department of Communications, submitted applications for the “.durban”, “.capetown” and “.joburg” TLDs. This will enable key South African cities to compete with their international counterparts and, more especially, allow them to showcase the cities as business and tourist destinations.