It might be the third largest economy in Africa, but South Africa’s ccTLD has cemented its position as Africa’s largest passing the 1.2 million mark in December 2018. Today registrations under .za stand at 1.216 million, the vast majority being under .co.za with 1.189 million.
Within South Africa there are also several city gTLDs, the largest today being .capetown (4,812 registrations) followed by .joburg (3,236) and .durban (2,324) as well as 2 smaller second level domains under .za (.web.za – 1,875 and .net.za – 1,856). South Africa’s ccTLD registry also manages the .africa gTLD, which is Africa-wide, of which there are 18,900 registrations.
“South Africa‘s SLDs, with their impressive 1.2 million total registrations, have cemented .ZA‘s standing as one of the world’s most popular namespaces and successfully capped ZACR‘s third decade serving the South African and global Internet consumer,” says ZACR CEO, Lucky Masilela.
In announcing their success, Masilela noted how South Africa, a country of 57 million people (gross domestic product of US$344 billion) with over 1.2 million registrations is way ahead of other large African countries such as Nigeria who has 190 million people (Africa’s largest GDP of $394 billion), but only 132,000 registrations under .ng. The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), the Nigerian registry manager, is working hard to address with registrations growing two-thirds in 2 years.
Masilela put the runaway success of co.za down to their globally proven “Triple R” model adopted in 2010 and to which the local domain name sector continues to adhere, with clearly obvious and positive results. The Triple R Model is based on the separation of functions and responsibilities by the Regulator the Registry Operator and the Registrar.
“Our current model is the reason South Africa boasts the highest number of Africa’s domain name registrations coupled with our intention to keep the domain costs as low as possible on the continent,” explained Masilela.
