The woes of registering top-level domains in Ghana

Before i get to the business of the day let me take time to apologize to anyone i may offend, i am not trying to attack personalities nor persons here, i am just addressing an appalling issue. I have been trying to register a .com.gh domain for the past 2 months for a friend who owns a business in Ghana and I have been tossed back and forth with plenty of needless paper work and equally needless signatures of human beings (unnecessary bureaucracies).

Prior to this incident I have been buying and making purchases for domains (.com, .org, even .ph in philipines) online for the past 4 to 5 years sitting behind my laptop and clicking a pay with… button here in Ghana making these transaction over in the US, without any problems nor complications, never have I ever been asked to download any form to fill neither have i been asked to attach any document by uploading. unfortunately the story is totally different here in Ghana. I used to do same with a local registrar based in the US for .gh domain and that alone came with many cock and bull stories about security, authenticity and many other stories of the like. What broke the camels back is when I initiated purchase for a new domain name under .com.gh. My friend Tim through whom i make these purchases for close to 10 years decided to give e a heads up with what was happening and what he goes through constantly to register these domains, he sent me a message telling me of how he had discontinued his third-party purchase of Ghana specific domains for clients for reasons such as (in his own terms) unprofessional service, difficulty in keeping up, too much trouble liaising with the Ghana registrar among others. in the preceding paragraphs i will publish Tim’s reply when i asked that he registers the domain on my behalf.

PS: i edited it for readability but made sure not to loose meaning or emphasis.

Network Computer Systems is walking backwards

“It is amazing to find that in this information age nothing there (NCS) is organized they still deal with useless and needless paper work, wasting customer’s time, and each time you have to send them a receipt before they even know you have made payment. You can call them directly to setup a registration process, hopefully they will deal with you normally, I will advice that you make sure you keep all your receipts forever because they will pile up a bill for you and say you never paid, they won’t tell you when the domain is expiring and they will charge you for renewal when you have not asked them to renew, I am listing the issues for you so you know before hand, that’s why I hate dealing with Ghanaian service providers. I will never host any service in Ghana or run any server in Ghana, simply put, nothing is organized.

Over here in the US, the service providers respond to you in a matter of seconds, for example if I have issues with my modem I call their line an automated teller picks up and will fix the issue, no need for humans when I need to setup a new internet the auto teller will detect my modem and set it up. I don’t wait for anyone to come to my house or schedule long appointments this is how life is around here no one has time so everything moves fast and efficiently. NCS is directly the opposite, they have tons of paper even for registration you have to fill a form and send by hand or scan and forward to them. I am sad to say Ghana is going backwards and we need to change the minds of people it will take time but we need to start somewhere I am tired of backwardness I could have done much more with Linux in Ghana but they are old fashioned and do not want a change even with our billing systems some Ghanaians wanted to do things manually we refused them service if they won’t comply with our policy.”

My experience with NCS

So after being lambasted by my very good friend via his “State of NCS Address” I decided to contact NCS myself and i experienced an even more disturbing and cumbersome service. Firstly i googled the keyword “NCS Ghana” (as i will normally do) and i was given a couple of search results i clicked on the most likely link which happened to be www.ncs.com.gh and found a button with “.gh domain registration form” unashamedly inscribed on it, I clicked and a domain_registration.doc document downloaded onto my device, i opened this document and i found a boring form, poorly designed with bad grammar and terrible annotation problems, and bad use of fonts and typefaces.

The internet is now a place where things happen, it is now cash crop for many, businesses are now depending on their websites to make money, people are using internet for many basic and advanced searches and for social reasons. We hear of many amazing purchases going on in the US a remarkable one being the Facebook acquisition of Whats app these can be attributed to the enabling environment in the US and for the Ghanaian tech community a commodity as basic as a domain need not be as cumbersome as it is.

NCS needs to sit up.

what would it take you to develop a website for domain buyers to be able to choose, pay, and manage their own domains by just sitting at home. I understand the registering top level domains needs to be regulated but that can easily be done online without asking people to fill hard copy forms and submitting in your offices. We need these little things to work, they all add up to making Ghana the Ghana we all want, these primitive methods need to be nipped in the bud they must be pushed to our past. Its a global village now and we need to be connected to connect. There are many young businesses that can develop these systems and some would gladly do these for a token but the will to do must be visible, the passion to create must be strong and the urge to maintain must be absolute.