Africa : A new market for domains?

[Gerrit]

With Asia and South America rapidly developping their internet presence and market, and with most Oceanian ccTLDs being very popular amongst people worldwide, Africa is the only continent where domain sales seem to be still extremely rare.

But, I was wondering if being amongst the pioneers in the African internet industry, the domainers buying African ccTLDs could not be doing good investments. Things can only get better for Africa with already some countries rapidly developing the number of internet facilities (Nigeria, Tunesia, South Africa, Congo, ...). Still, a lot of keywords are still available with African ccTLDs. Knowing that in the future there will be a (slow) rise of internet connections and development in Africa, would it not be wise to buy some really good keywords with African extentions? Once the internet is booming in Africa, these domains will be really worth good money. Imagine you could get a name like poker.bf or hotels.cd ... these domains may be worth a lot in the future once the African internet usage is growing more rapidly than it is now.

Does this make sense?

PS: the question may be how realistic a rapid growth of African internet penetration is. But some countries like Morocco, Tunesia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Congo, etc are already seeing more and more internet presence, and I am sure at some point (maybe sooner than we expect) the rest of Africa will follow, especially the relatively stable countries like Kenya, Senegal, Botswana, ...

 

[Kate]

The problem is that the Internet is not well developed in many parts of Africa.
Most of the time they don't use their own extensions a lot, it's usually official sites.
Moreover the African ccTLDs are more or less expensive and sometimes involve tedious paperwork.
It's no wonder the locals will often use .com/.net/.org: cheaper and no hassle.

If you are interested I would suggest .co.za (South Africa), perhaps .ma (Morocco) if you have development plans to make up for the expensive fee.
Right now the ccTLDs are not shining in Africa (with a few exceptions like .co.za) so investing in them means a lof of money in the long term with very uncertain results :imho:

As for poker.bf or sex.blahblah the only market for these names is domainers

 

[thetruman]

you said " things just can get better for Africa".
I say things are getting with time worst for Africa. This is reality unfortunately :td:
Kenia stable? you are not following the news my friend...Kenia is going to be in a civil war soon...

 

[onewordonly]

Your be waiting a long time I think before Africa catches up to the rest of the world if it does, there are better places to invest unless your interested in gambling for a very long term peroid.

 

[salesdd]

Need more or long time as I will wonder for the developing countries like Africa.

 

[zero_haze_au]

Africa is certainly going no where fast.

In Congo, alone over 45,000 people die every month from the current war (stats from bbc).

Approx. over 2 Million Africans die from aids each year

African Population: 941,249,130

Population % of World: 14.2 %

Internet Users: 44,361,940

Penetration of Population: 4.7 %

Percentage of users in World: 3.4 %

Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa make up the majority of Africas Internet Users. The rest is pretty much as third world as you can get.

Also, even with 44 million people online its still basic, as their wealth is relatively low and ecommerce is certainly not big in Africa.