Under Foreign Control: GICTA Unveils Plans to Re-Locate .GM Domain to The Gambia
GICTA Director General Dr. Abdoukarim Jallow © Askanwi
By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT
“Being in charge of a domain name is not a right, but it’s a responsibility that you are willing to accept. That also means you don’t just give it to someone else because they offer you money. You just say, Will it be taken care of responsibly?” These are the concerns of the Norwegian currently in charge of The Gambia’s .GM domain name.
After the Director General of the Gambia Information and Communication Technology Agency (GICTA) announced that the country’s .GM domain was in the possession of one Jorn Grotnes [commonly called Jorn] residing in Norway back on 10th December 2024, Askanwi managed to speak to three stakeholders on the issue.
GICTA Trying to Get Control of .GM Domain
Speaking at the last press conference of the year 2024, GICTA’s Dr. Jallow announced that “the top-level domain” .GM “is currently done outside of The Gambia by somebody else, and the government has been working very hard to get that re-delegated to the country due to so many reasons, and I can tell you efforts are very high up.”
According to Dr. Jallow, the government has hired the services of “Mr. Yankuba Jaiteh, who is a very experienced infrastructure guy. He has a lot of experience working in Gamtel as a manager and other institutions, and he has started the process of re-delegation after so many years the previous government was not able to get this re-delegation done." He added that the newly established “Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy (CDE) is working very hard to ensure that the re-delegation is done as quickly as possible.”
So, what is a domain name, and why is it important?
Our research highlights that a domain name is a website’s unique online address, similar to a street address, which is important for a country because a country-specific domain extension (ccTLD) can indicate where a website is based, allowing businesses to target their local audience and build trust by showing a clear connection to their geographic location. The Gambia’s domain name is .GM, while Senegal’s is .SN, and the United States is .US.
Our reporter asked GICTA's Dr. Jallow to explain who the Gambia’s .GM domain name was currently under, and he revealed that it was “being managed by an individual who lives in Norway called Mr. Jorn Grotnes”. He added “Actually, we need to be fair with him because he was the guy who made sure the .GM has been working up until now; he put a lot of effort into it. At a time when the government was not very much interested in it, he still continued to host it and provide services. However, it is important that it is back.”
In his explanation, he revealed that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) “is the international organisation responsible for domain names and numbers in the world. For you to be able to do the re-delegation, you have to contact them to apply for re-delegation so that they can take it from that guy and hand it over. And it is not something that is just easy; the government cannot just go and just jump on him. No. It is a process that we have to follow before we get it.”
Re-delegation is a process where a domain name is reassigned from an individual or institution to another individual or institution. According to the ICANN website, the country’s .GM domain name’s Delegation Record is listed under Mr. Jorn Grotnes, who serves as the Administrative and Technical contact and is currently collaborating with Jokkolabs in Bakau. Our reporter managed to speak to Mr. Jorn Grotnes and his partner, Mr. Poncelet Ileleji [commonly called Poncelet], the CEO of Jokkolabs, located in Bakau.
Mr. Jorn Grotnes, Administrative and Technical Contact for .GM Domain Name © LinkedIn
Jorn: No Concrete Proposal from The Gambia
Speaking to Mr. Jorn in Norway via WhatsApp, he explained that there have been about “ten different ministers over the years” he has been in discussions with the government regarding the .GM domain name and that “so far nothing has actually transpired.” According to Mr. Jorn, the .GM domain name was delegated to him back in 1996 and is “not something obvious that a country should run it as a government. There has to be some sort of professionalism.”
When asked if the government hasn’t sent a concrete proposal, Mr. Jorn said, “There hasn’t been anything like that.” Asked if he had sent his terms and a price for the .GM domain name to be re-delegated, he explained that “I am not demanding anything, and I haven’t sent any terms or anything. I’ve just said that we should all agree that the point of doing the re-delegation of the registration is that they keep the domain space open to local businesses and these kinds of basic things. It’s not really merchandised; it’s for the internet community.”
According to Mr. Jorn, “Being in charge of a domain name is not a right, but it’s a responsibility that you are willing to accept. That also means you don’t just give it to someone else because they offer you money. You just say, Will it be taken care of responsibly? I have my work, and this is more like a hobby to me.”
Speaking about the perception of the .GM domain name being under foreign control, Mr. Jorn says he “understands that people can react to the fact that I am not in The Gambia at the moment, but we have a good local presence there. We have Jokkolabs. So that’s the basic things we should have.”
He added that “there are less than 2,000 active domains right now, and a little bit over half of this is in The Gambia,” making it less of a lucrative business venture. However, he also believes “it’s possible to discuss a future model. I don’t have any idea of creating it like it’s my personal property, but it’s my responsibility.”
According to Poncelet, “Why nothing has come out of it [from the government’s side] is that they also realise they cannot make money out of it. If you have less than 2,000 domain names, what Jorn charges and what other people are charging is much different. If you have to hire a domain administrator and all these people, it takes a lot.”
Asked if he was willing to give the .GM domain name to The Gambia for free if the government could provide him with some guarantees, Mr. Jorn noted that “I wouldn’t believe any guarantees; I would have to see the actual proposal and how it’s going to be run and who’s going to run it.”
Mr. Poncelet Ileleji Jokkolabs CEO © Jokkolabs
Jokkolabs CEO Questions Gambia’s Readiness to Host .GM Domain
Domain names have subdomains such as .EDU.GM, which indicates that a website is run by an educational institution, and .GOV.GM, which indicates that a website is run by the government.
In his effort to assist The Gambia in gradually taking control of the .GM domain name, Mr. Jorn revealed that he made efforts to delegate the .EDU.GM subdomain name to the University of The Gambia and the .GOV.GM subdomain name to The Gambia Government, but these opportunities were not utilised properly, demonstrating that the .GM domain could probably not be managed properly by the government.
“I tried to delegate the EDU subdomain to the University of The Gambia, figuring that they will have people who are educated in this kind of thing, and maybe they can run it for educational resources in The Gambia. But in those years, 10 years ago or 15 years. It hasn’t really happened,” said Mr. Jorn.
“The other subdomain that has been delegated is the government so that the government can have its own subdomain, .GOV.GM. The point of that is for people to trust those domains so that people can know that this can only be set up by the government because there are a lot of scams going on. It’s not worked,” added Mr. Jorn.
Mr. Poncelet also shares a similar view and asserts that due to the .GM not being so lucrative, “it’s either our university grows and it becomes like what is happening in Senegal .SN that is run from the university." However, he questioned the UTG’s capacity to do so and noted that “we don’t even have a full-time professor in the UTG’s Computer Science Department. They can’t even manage .EDU.GM. So how are you going to say, Let them run .GM that all of us that are in? If something happens, our websites are down. If you talk to any government official, they will tell you that Jorn has been cooperating with them.”
According to the Jokkolabs CEO, “The reality with everything that happens in The Gambia is we want the stability. Even government servers go down. So, you bring .GM to the country. The government is planning a data centre; if that data centre comes up, then we are good to go.”
GICTA Director General Dr. Abdoukarim Jallow © Askanwi
GICTA Unveils Plans to Establish Data Centre to Co-Locate .GM Domain
Our reporter questioned GICTA’s Dr. Jallow on the reasons the government hasn’t approached Mr. Jorn with a concrete plan or made an offer for the re-delegation of the .GM domain, and he highlighted that “there are processes that we have to follow. There are prerequisites that we have to put in place, such as the required personnel that is required by ICAAN, like a technical manager and also an administrative manager, to hire those people.”
Highlighting the importance of preparedness, Dr. Jallow notes that the government has “to have the infrastructure that is required to run and manage the .GM. If we don’t have the infrastructure as Jorn is saying, he hands it over; eventually, there are issues with it, and then the entire domain name of the country is going to be down, and we don’t want that to happen. So, we also have to make sure that we put that infrastructure in place.”
“We have started the process; also, we’ve got some equipment that we received from PCH Africa, which is the servers to run and host the domain name. We’ve had that, and we’ve tested them, but now we need to provide the independence that he’s talking about. We need to co-locate the Six P, which is the Serrekunda exchange point. The internet exchange point," said GICTA’s Dr. Jallow.
Looking at other similar arrangements in the country, Mr. Poncelet asserts that “technically we don’t really have a data centre. They will tell you that we have a data centre in Central Bank for the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) or GamSwitch. The government wants to set up a tier-four data centre under this WARDIP project. If it happens, Dr. Abdoukarim Jallow, they will be the ones to manage it, and it will be good.”
Highlighting the government’s plans, Dr. Jallow revealed that “there is a committee that kind of manages the Serrekunda exchange point, but we want to co-locate because you cannot have the exchange point separate from the .GM domain. We need to co-locate the two.”
To address power cut concerns, Dr. Jallow says, “The co-location has to have a reliable infrastructure. If you co-locate it somewhere you are going to have power cuts; the entire domain of the country is going to be down because of power, and we are trying to co-locate it at the Gambia Submarine Cable Consortium (GSCC); that’s the ACE Cable. In that place, the power doesn’t go off. In terms of connecting to the internet, there are connection points to the internet.”
“We have met with the Board of Directors of the GSCC; we have discussed it, and we are just on the final touches now to finalise that. So as soon as we get approval from the Board of Directors from the GSCC to co-locate there, we will then install the Serrekunda Exchange Point and the .GM servers, and we will then kickstart the negotiation with Jorn and ICANN. This is where we are," said the GICTA Director General.
Will the .GM Domain Be Inclusive or Government Controlled?
One of the concerns raised by Jorn and Poncelet is the government taking complete control of the .GM domain. Warning of the dangers, Mr. Jorn says, “You might have a great minister right now, but the next minister might not be that great. In Norway, they have a second body that takes control of the domain name. It’s a not-for-profit, and it’s not a government body, but it has ownership from the government, which means the government has some say in the matter.”
According to Mr. Poncelet, “For ICANN to approve this, other stakeholders have to be involved; the media and the civil society have to be involved.” He recalled, “When Sheriff Bojang was made minister, he went to the African Internet Governance Forum and said the .GM domain belongs to The Gambia. As a minister, you don’t say such things because they will look at you and think it was under Jammeh you people wanted to be authoritarian.”
Dr. Jallow seems to agree with an inclusive management structure and informed our reporter that “when we co-locate the two, we will then have a management structure that includes the stakeholders in the internet domain, which includes the Serrekunda Exchange Point, Internet Exchange Point Committee, and representatives from the government and civil society.”
Speaking on the current government, Mr. Jorn says, “I really don’t know how well the government is functioning in the Gambia right now. For a long time, I could not cooperate with the government because they would wake people up in the middle of the night with some people wanting to put pressure to take control of the domain name. Now I think things are improving.”
However, he concedes, “One person shouldn’t sit there making all the decisions. I do agree that there should be a plan for how this should be more permanently established with a system. Even though this is just a small domain name in the world, for me it’s important. As time passes, I think this is something I will have to do when I retire from my normal work, and I start looking at this as a more serious matter.”
