Kenya’s online presence continued to expand in the third quarter of the year, with new data showing that local website registrations reached their highest level yet.
The Communications Authority of Kenya reported that the number of registered dot-ke domains climbed to 115,653 by the end of September, reflecting steady growth in the country’s officially managed national registry.
According to the latest quarterly statistics, the tally rose from 111,313 recorded three months earlier. This added 4,340 new registrations, representing a 3.9 percent increase.
The authority noted that the upward trend has been consistent since 2018, when the registry stood at 85,744, before rising to 101,123 in 2020 during the widespread shift to online platforms brought on by Covid-19 restrictions.
The CA groups dot-ke domains into several categories, including company websites, personal sites, not-for-profit organisations, and institutions of higher learning. Others are government institutions, information services, second-level users, and mobile content.
“The total number of users registered under the .KE domain increased by 3.9 percent, to 115,653 from 111,313 recorded in the previous quarter,” wrote the authority in its statistical release.
Companies accounted for the largest share of registrations in the quarter at 102,741, followed by personal websites at 7,144. Not-for-profit organisations had 2,082 domains, while institutions of higher learning registered 1,420.
Lower and middle-level institutions recorded 1,018 domains. Government institutions had 879 registrations, second-level users 209, blogs 135, and mobile content 25.
In an earlier interview, Geoffrey Shimanyula, former chairman of the Kenya Network Information Centre (KeNIC), which manages the dot-ke registry, said the pace of growth reflects how users often register domains for short-term plans.
“It’s not that we haven’t grown, what happens in this business is that people register a domain name for a specific purpose and when that purpose ends, they forget about it,” he said. “So, our biggest challenge has been to renew these domains. Out of all the dot-ke domains registered, we have around 80 percent active websites.”
