By:
Robert Kwaku Annor
Sierra Leone’s Ministry of
Communication, Technology and Innovation has established a .SL Country Code
Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) Stakeholder Working Group to guide the transfer of the
country's national internet domain, .sl, to local management.
The Working Group was
constituted at the Preliminary Consultation on the Repatriation and
Redelegation of the .SL ccTLD, marking the first technical engagement with key
partners on the framework and scope of the initiative.
The .sl registry, which is
the national database that records every .sl domain and directs it to the
correct server, is currently hosted outside Sierra Leone. More than 2,500 .sl
addresses rely on the registry, including websites and email services used by
institutions and businesses across the country.
The consultation brought
together mobile network operators, internet service providers and heads of
universities. It was chaired by the Ministry's Director of Technology, with the
Permanent Secretary, Deputy Minister, Director of Policy, Research and Compliance,
and Project Coordinator of the Sierra Leone Digital Transformation Project
(SLDTP) also in attendance.
The Working Group will
support the development of a governance framework for .sl under national
management. Its membership and mandate will be presented to a wider national
consultation, which is expected to support Sierra Leone's redelegation request
to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the global body responsible
for coordinating country-code domains.
The process will involve two
stages: repatriation and redelegation. Repatriation involves migrating the
registry to sovereign infrastructure hosted within Sierra Leone, while
redelegation is the formal IANA procedure that recognises the new arrangement.
The new registry will also
introduce stronger security measures to help ensure that users visiting a .sl
address reach the authentic website.
The .sl domain was first
registered in 1997, with Sierratel serving as its manager. Registration
services have been managed by a private operator since 2007.
The initiative is funded by
the World Bank Group through the Sierra Leone Digital Transformation Project
(SLDTP).
