The Headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia was the venue of a two days Experts’ meeting on .Africa gTLD project.

This project aims at branding the African continent on the cyberspace and providing

African community with a continental mark on the Internet.

The meeting was organized by the African Union Commission (AUC), through its Infrastructure and Energy Department.

It was attended by Thirteen (13) experts from various countries and organizations who discussed all relevant issues regarding .Africa gTLD project.

This meeting was a follow up of the Declaration of the AU Heads of States Summit held in February 2010 in Addis Ababa and the Recommendation of the African Union

Communication and Information Technologies Ministerial Conference (CITMC) held in

Johannesburg and Abuja in November 2009 and August 2010 respectively, to carry out the required steps to secure scare resources such as .Africa gTLD.

The outcomes present different scenarios and actions taking into consideration the tight timeline remaining for Africa before the forthcoming round of applications in Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). These scenarios covered the issues of the potential institutional structure, Technical and Financial modules. The following points have been recommended as immediate actions to be taken:

1- Announcing the intention in the public forum of ICANN and in all Technical,

Business and Policy forums;

2- Signing the Guide Book Letter;

3- Writing a message to the Government Advisory Committee (GAC);

4- Formalizing project Task Force;

5- Preparing and submitting the required documents to ICANN.

In that view, the meeting recommended all participating Experts to be members of the Task Force and also to speed up the process.

In order to facilitate the exchange, a temporary mailing address of the Task force has been created: audotafrica@googlegroups.com.