According to The Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NIRA), the country’s ccTLD .NG presently only has 90,036 subscribers as of the first quarter of 2017.
Over the last 10 years, registrations for .NG has progressed slowly. Despite Nigeria having a population of approximately 180 million people, the fact that there are fewer than 100,000 domain names registered is a cause for concern for NIRA.
In an extensive report, NIRA reveals that the whole of Africa has less than two million active domain names, citing lower than expected number of registrations across the continent. Examples include Kenya’s .KE with a lowly 61,623 registrations, while South Africa’s .ZA currently account for over half of all domain names in the continent with 1,148,095 registrations.
However, speaking at a workshop in Lagos, Dean of NIRA, Sikiru Shehu, maintains a positive outlook for the future of the country and the continent as a whole, saying:
As worrisome as these figures could be, what is obvious here are great avenues to generate jobs, create wealth and employment opportunities.
Just imagine, a 10 million .ng domain count in Nigeria today, and the multiplier effects on websites development, domain names hosting, content development and so on. For me, domain name business is a big business and the DNS industry is very large. I see a very huge opportunity to generate jobs, create wealth, and earn forex, reduction in capital flight, boosts availability of local contents.
He identified several factors responsible for the slow growth experienced by the DNS industry in Africa, such as a lack of awareness, poor infrastructure and outdated government policies, but was confident the situation will improve over time.