.ke Registration

The .ke registration is administrated by the Kenya Network Information Centre (KeNIC), a Kenya based private non-profit-making organization. The Internet country code top level domain for Kenya is .ke, which was introduced in the year 1993. KeNIC has been assigned its authority by ICANN- the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The .ke registry is a closed registry offering domain registration services to persons and organizations in Kenya. The .ke domain is managed by a domain administrator who has the ultimate responsibility of the domain. There is a technical contact that provides any required technical support.

You can submit the application for registration at the office in Nairobi, Kenya. Once you submit an application for .ke domain registration, the date on which the registrar accepts the application will be the date of the agreement. Once a user ID has been registered, registrants will be required to enter into an agreement with KENIC. The user ID will only be assigned on successful completion of the agreement. The domain name should be similar to the company or organization name.

Some of the second level domains available are:

• .co.ke : for companies
• .or.ke : for non profit making organizations and NGOs
• .ne.ke : for network devices
• .go.ke : for government entities
• .ac.ke : for institutions of higher education
• .sc.ke : for lower and middle institutes of learning

Some of the domain name extensions (such as go.ke, ac.ke, sc.ke) require additional documents before they can be registered.

The KeNIC billing cycle is on a 12 month basis for .ke registration and maintenance. All maintenance fees are subjected to VAT. Domain names that have not been paid will be suspended but maintained in the database for 180 days. They will be released into the pool for .ke re-registration after the due date. New domains will be invoiced once the .ke registration ticket is closed.

The official website for registration services is http://www.kenic.or.ke and http://whois.kenic.or.ke is the whois server that provides other important details.