[renewal unlikely to exceed >$20] Promotion for registration of .africa at 200 KES

Washington,

1. At the end of the day, we are debating a 1 year investment of $2 (i.e. ~$0.003 or 0.30 Kenyan cents a day) in the hope of making sufficient return, over a 12 month period, that allows someone to save $20 for transfer/renewal.. 🙂

2. We haven’t even touched on hosting and development – so I doubt the target market is the $1 a day demographic. Should the providers target everyone? Why?

3. Even if those domains are given away 100% free (say for 3 years) including 100% free hosting, only rare outliers in the $1 a day demographic will be able to leverage that opportunity because;
    a. they still need a product or service that has market-fit and can be sold online; how will they fund this?
    b. they need to have order processing capabilities (e.g. sorting & handling);
    c. they need technical skills (or hire some gig workers or volunteers) to be able to troubleshoot their site;
    d. airtime to provide customer service / check orders.    e. they need marketing savvy for ecommerce (or hire for gaps)
    f. They also need to know how to manage their business and cash flow (or hire for gaps).
    g. they would need to access low crime locations to set up collection points
    h. and they till need to navigate the government harassment engines e.g. Kanjo (which disproportionately targets and extorts them) 

[digressing heavily…] I think the NGO industry has created a lot of confusion around the $1/day demographic.
This demographic is literally trapped in poverty because massive structural (and societal) odds are stacked up against them. 

From what I have learned, I would argue that the best way to create *sustainable* wealth for the $1/d demographic – with the main goal of moving them higher up the pyramid – is for Government to design and invest in functional startup ecosystems (in multiple sectors) whose main objective would be to rapidly generate a large number of indigenous market-relevant companies.

Only Government (via National Champion policies) can fix extreme poverty (and associated challenges) – not NGOs, who often will have unspoken conflicts of interest. The ecosystem would be designed to bring economies of scale to small business models by creating smart production dependencies (similar to the Shenzhen ecosystem in China where you can have one company only focused on manufacturing screws for mobile phones, another for covers etc).

It is these diverse companies that would hire workers / apprentices from financially disadvantaged groups, train them on the job and pay them fairly. As these workers up-skill over time, the best of them would be encouraged to spawn their own companies and plug into the ecosystem to fill in gaps or maximize economies. 
–> Incubate –> Grow –> Spawn –> Repeat
The current “impact startups” scene is fundamentally broken – it just can’t scale because the investors went and copied a broken and failed NGO model to come up with a rehash of dependency architectures which only entrench poverty over the long term!
Brgds,Patrick

On Wednesday, February 6, 2019, 2:30:24 PM GMT+3, Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo@gmail.com> wrote:

Patrick,
The issue was actually about the transparency on the cost of renewal, nothing about how little the cost is compared to c0ffee .Remember that in KE, there are people who live below $1/day so $2-3 is such a significant amount, no? 🙂

On Wed, 6 Feb 2019 at 13:38, Patrick A. M. Maina via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Listers, a quick google-search shows that .africa renewal is unlikely to exceed current market price of ~$20 (and could go lower depending on market forces).

So the deals being offered are reasonable and win-win if you plan to use your site for commercial gain as you have a whole year to try out and develop your business idea.

For perspective, $2-3 is the price of one/two cup(s) of coffee at your favorite Wi-Fi lounge. You can always switch registrars – or abandon the domain when renewal falls due, if things don’t work out.
There are other considerations of course (which are usual and normal) such as registrar credibility and/or jurisdiction issues in case of trademark or other disputes. To mitigate those risks, and to promote our local tech industry, I would recommend .africa registrars whose servers are based in Kenya.
Good day.

 
On Wednesday, February 6, 2019, 1:08:21 PM GMT+3, Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Hi Ali,
This information is very clear. It is the responsibility of Registrars to inform and  educate the Registrants on the same. Mark Elkins has done that in this thread. That said no excuses, this domain is going for the price of a loaf of bread it cant get any cheaper, people should just buy , we can discuss renewal fees in 11 months time.
Regards
Regards
On Wed, 6 Feb 2019 04:35 Harry Delano via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke wrote:

That’s indeed…!
Harry
On Tue, 5 Feb 2019, 18:10 Odhiambo Washington via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke wrote:

I should have done it before letting the cat out of the bag! 🙂 

On Tue, 5 Feb 2019 at 17:36, Mark Elkins via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Good Try. Although at Registration one can technically purchase up to 10 (not 15) years for a brand new domain – the offer is as I understand it only for the first year.

To be honest – I’ve no idea if it would work (whether its been programmed properly)  at the Registry or any ICANN Registrars. I have just “corrected” my code so if a domain is on sale – you can only buy one year. Thanks for that evil heads-up!

On 2019/02/05 15:37, Odhiambo Washington via kictanet wrote:

Can I register, say, odhiambo.africa for 15 years using the offer? I need to renew after 15 years only 🙂 
On Tue, 5 Feb 2019 at 16:31, Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Indeed Mark.
Regards
On Tue, 5 Feb 2019 11:30 Mark Elkins via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke wrote:

Just to confirm, in South Africa, on my VWEB.co.za portal – I am currently charging R40.00 (thats under US$3.00) for an “Africa” domain registration to the man in the street – that’s half the price of a CO.ZA. Only until the end of March and only for new domains.

The ZACR really is promoting the AFRICA space very well.

On 2019/02/05 12:44, Barrack Otieno via kictanet wrote:

Listers,
There is an offer for .Africa Domains for Kes 200. This is your chance to take your business beyond the borders. Kindly note that the renewal fee will be different.
Regards

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Afriregister Kenya <admin@afriregister.co.ke>
Date: Mon, Feb 4, 2019 at 4:07 PM
Subject: Promotion for registration of .africa at 200 KES
To: <otieno.barrack@gmail.com>

Dear Client,

I hope this email finds you well.
We would like to inform you that from February 1st to March 31, 2019, there is a promotion for .africa registration. The price is 200 KES / year for each registration. Please note that the promotion is only for registrations and not renewals and that it is a registration for one year.

Link: afriregister.co.ke/

Thank You
Best regards
Afriregister Kenya