Nigeria is planning to cut prices some of its domain names, including the string name.ng, under a plan to increase uptake of the nation’s online real estate.
Technology Times can confirm that barring any last minute change, the cost of registering a name.ng domain may come down as low as 200%.
The Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NIRA),the custodian of Nigeria’s .ng domain names recently announced plans to slash the cost of .ng domain names as from April this year, to mark the tenth anniversary of the body.
Mr Sunday Folayan, President of NIRA said at the time that the move will encourage uptake by the Internet community and also encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to own a .ng domain name.
“We want all Nigerian businesses online, and one of the things we will be doing effective first of April, is to review downwards, the cost of registering domains as an incentive. Reducing downwards most especially for people to take on and have personal websites” Folayan told journalist at a recent press briefing held at its corporate headquarters in Lagos.
“We believe we need to encourage entrepreneurs and small businesses. They are the engine room for development”, the NIRA President said. “In Nigeria, we have done 60,000 registrations; in Africa, 15,000,000 and globally, 294, 000,000. That shows that there is a huge opportunity for us in Nigeria. We have not even scratched the surface”, according to the NIRA President while examine the global domain name registration trend.
Looking closer home, the NIRA President says that the .com.ng name string has grown by almost 70% of the registrations, while second level domain, the .ng is just 17%. The other domain names that account for 1.9% include name.ng and i.ng that has just been opened up in the previous year.
”There are 59,847 domains in the .ng registry. A quarter of these domains (25%) are reserved. The reserved domains include geonames, premium names, trademarked names, single letters and two letters” Folayan said.
NIRA plans to give optimum exposure to young men and women with its entrepreneurship seminar coming up this March because ”they are the ones that can bring about technological innovations and give the nation its next billion naira enterprises”
Also NIRA is looking into Child Online Protection to ensure that the youth can surf the Internet safely through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm called The Ndukwe Kalu Foundation, dedicated to honour Engineer Ndukwe Kalu, the late pioneer President of NIRA.
“We are looking at programmes to assure safe access on the Internet. We want to be able to say that this Nigerian website is good, it is not a fraudulent website. NIRA has been able to position .ng as a brand that all Nigerians are comfortable to buy, knowing that they will not be defrauded”, according to Folayan.
According to NIRA, activities for its 10th year anniversary billed to hold later this year include:
- The NiRA Fair and Exhibition of the DNS industry to be mounted by NiRA Accredited Registrars, resellers, web hosting companies and software developers, on 12th March, 2016
- A Youth Empowerment and Wealth Creation program on the 19th March 2016
- Conferment of .ng Ambassadors
- Launch of .ng Scouts programme
- The .ng Social Media activities
- A climax with the .ng 10th Anniversary Gala and Award Night on the 2nd of April 2016.
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