Buy .ga Domain Name

No, you do not have to live there. The registration policy sets out three alternatives: living in Gabon, carrying out professional, personal, commercial or cultural activities in the country, or having any other direct or indirect tie with Gabon. The third limb keeps the door wide open; no address, agent or trustee in Gabon is required, and the extension is distributed by accredited registrars around the world. You are not asked to evidence the declared tie when you register, but the registry may ask later. Register on a basis you could actually defend: if the registry finds that you no longer meet the eligibility criteria, it can suspend and delete the name.

The policy closes off three groups. First, geographical names: names relating to the territory of the Republic of Gabon, its monuments and symbols, and any other place name that resonates in the country, including variants and abbreviations, may not be taken without the registry's authorisation. Second, the public sector: names of public authorities at any level, and names tied to public services such as public order and security, health, taxation, transport, urban planning, the environment, culture and tourism, are reserved for the bodies concerned. Third, a reserved list left to the registry's discretion; it may withhold a name and may choose not to publish that list. Holding a name purely to sell, resell or transfer it is also expressly forbidden.

Because the operation of the zone changed hands. For years .ga was handed out free of charge by a private operator; the Gabonese authorities ended that contract on the grounds that the service was not satisfactory and brought management back into the country. The handover took effect on 3 June 2023, and since then the zone has been run by ANINF, with the French registry Afnic providing the technical platform. What that means for you is simple: .ga today is an ordinary country extension with a named registry and a published policy, registered through accredited registrars. Most names left over from the free era were cleared out because nobody renewed them.

Letters, digits and the hyphen. The policy makes one point explicitly: accented and special characters used in French are excluded. Since French is Gabon's official language, that effectively limits the zone to plain Latin letters, and a name containing é, è or ç cannot be registered. The hyphen is restricted too: a name may not begin or end with a hyphen, and a double hyphen in the third and fourth positions is not accepted. In testing, spellings that broke these rules were rejected by the registry system as an invalid domain name rather than reported as free. Checking these three limits while you shortlist names saves a failed order later.

Through a familiar route rather than a local arbitration scheme. The registration policy applies the UDRP as adopted by ANINF, the uniform domain name dispute resolution policy framed under WIPO provisions, and states that the registry is not bound by any other dispute procedure. By registering, the holder undertakes to submit to it. Alongside that, the registry has a direct power of its own: it may refuse, suspend or delete a name whose holder no longer meets the eligibility criteria or whose contact data is inaccurate, and it may act to protect the integrity, security and stability of the registry or to comply with a court order. The policy is governed by Gabonese law.

Not the holder. The registration policy states plainly that, under Gabonese personal data protection legislation, all registrant data is subject to restricted circulation and no data relating to a holder is published online in the lookup database. Measurement matches: in the records queried, the name, address, city, country, telephone and email fields were all masked, and the masking made no distinction between individuals and organisations. What you do see is the record identifier, the creation and expiry dates, status codes, the name servers and the registrar's name. Disclosure is possible only on a court order or judicial requisition, or through the registry's own request form, and the registry may refuse. Check your own record on the whois search page.

Only through an accredited registrar. ANINF acts as the registry and takes no applications directly; the holder is bound both by the registry's registration policy and by the agreement with the registrar they chose. Names are allocated on a first come, first served basis, in the chronological order of registrar requests, and there is no reservation procedure or waiting list. The policy also spells out a caveat worth knowing: even if a name appears available at the moment you ask, the registry does not guarantee you will obtain it, because another request may already be ahead of yours. Once you have a candidate, check its status on the domain name search page.

In two situations. The first is an eligibility or contact-data problem: if the registry identifies non-compliance with the policy, or inaccurate or outdated contact information, it contacts you, gives you fifteen days to clarify or correct the situation, and if the matter is unresolved the name is suspended for at least fifteen days and then deleted. No registration fee is refunded in that case. The second is prohibited use: distributing malicious software, phishing, botnet misuse, infringement of intellectual property rights, fraudulent or deceptive practices, and any use likely to mislead the public about the place a name refers to or the official nature of its origin. Keeping your contact record current removes the easiest of these risks.