African Startups in .com(dotcom) ambush

Recently, I've been involved with low, medium and high profile projects.

Most of them required getting a domain name related to the project I'm working on.

Sometimes, the client come with their domain names.

But some of them are beginners, they have little knowledge of domain name check sites like checkdomain.com, namecheap.com or the numerous re-sellers who have this service.

Africa is in the period of uprising in web and mobile. More people and companies are seeing the need to get a web presence.

Startups are born every second from Nigeria , through Cameroon, East to South Africa. Internet usage in Africa is rising. The present growth is at 2,357.3 %. {that's HUGE!}

The major problem is, the startup or the company needs to get a name that reflects the company or the product or the startup name. This means my startup company name should not be Cocoa and my domain name is Corn!

In one of the cases,

a company that has been existing in Cameroon for 10 years called NRL, needs a  website with a .com extension nrl.com. The company specialises in Computer spare parts.

But if you go through the search to buy the domain, it can not be available. see,

result from checkdomain.com

See for yourself the domains available :); .la and .cc. Disaster!.

I noted that possible words from the English dictionary saw all the domains absent.

If you are lucky someone should be ready to re-sell at a higher cost. But we should not settle on that.

It is this very problem of absence of proper domain which first prompted the Wasamundi team to look inside.

We understood that Africa and Cameroon has a rich culture of Language and A name drawn from this language should be .com available. We were sure, we would find something like us.

Originally, we tried, locate, locator, ifind, findme, searchme, all this domain names searchearth{which is not actually sexy for a product name} where not available.

We therefore settled for wasamundi, which has several varied meanings, but we are sticking with searchearth.

I should not be tempted to think that ,it is this .com ambush that led to the name Ushahidi, ubuntu, umbono.

Nevertheless, whether they were ambushed or not, the example is clear. 

Drawing a product name from Africa's rich culture should be our number on thoughts for African startups.

So my advice is simple, no matter the .com ambush, Africa has a rich culture, rich language which should serve as an escape route to the .com ambush.

Greetings to my friend Eloge Kly, CEO of dotcom :).

I'll see you sooner!

My dream of One African One Computer; delivering technology to Cameroon.

As the story goes, On Saturday November 13, Possibilities Without Borders held its third annual silent auction and gala event on the College of Charleston’s campus.  The event was in conjunction with Technology for Africa, whose goal was to raise $20,000 to be put toward a humanitarian Spring Break trip to Cameroon.

Four students and one professor  where chosen to make the trip.
The students must raise a minimum of $60,000 by March in order to purchase computers, smart boards, and other technological equipment they will be installing during their stay in Cameroon.

The journey of students of Charleston is not the first to Cameroon.

In March 2009, seven College of Charleston SIFE( Students in Free Enterprise ) students, a faculty advisor and one board member, traveled to Cameroon to set up three computer labs and teach entrepreneurship after successfully raising over $68,000 for the project.
This particular one will be of greater weight.
One source is quoted to have said this journey shall not only be a privilege to travel abroad, but being able to change the lives of countless youths is an even greater one.That   this is a unique experience that will change the lives of everyone involved.

Foumban has been chosen as the area of interest.


I hail this initiative as it comes along to support my dream of One African One Computer.
An Africa, with computers twice the number of phones presently in the continent.
Time will tell,I know, time will tell.