Landing in the Inbox from Africa: SPF, DKIM and DMARC Done Right

If your invoices, quotes and password resets keep landing in the spam folder, the problem is almost never your content. It is authentication. Mailbox providers like Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo now expect every sender to prove, cryptographically, that mail claiming to come from your domain really did.

For African senders this matters twice over. Many local domains were set up years ago with no SPF, no DKIM and certainly no DMARC, and the first time anyone notices is when a client says they never got the proposal. Let us fix that permanently.

The three records that matter

• SPF lists which servers are allowed to send for your domain.
• DKIM adds a signature to each message that proves it was not tampered with.
• DMARC tells receivers what to do when SPF or DKIM fails, and where to send reports.

A minimal, correct set of records for a domain sending through Digitel Africa Mail looks like this. Publish them at your DNS provider and give them an hour or two to propagate.

; SPF
digitel.africa.  TXT  "v=spf1 include:_spf.digitel.africa -all"

; DMARC (start at p=none while you monitor)
_dmarc.digitel.africa.  TXT  "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]; fo=1"

DKIM keys are generated per-domain in your control panel, so you paste the record we give you rather than writing it by hand. Once all three are live, verify them before you trust them.

dig +short TXT digitel.africa
dig +short TXT _dmarc.digitel.africa
swaks --to [email protected] --from you@digitel.africa --server smtp.digitel.africa

Move to p=none first, read the reports for two weeks, then tighten to quarantine and finally reject. Skipping the monitoring phase is how teams accidentally block their own mail.

— Anonymous, Deliverability Lead

Give it a fortnight of DMARC reports, confirm every legitimate source is aligned, then move to p=quarantine and eventually p=reject. At that point spoofers are locked out and your real mail earns the reputation it deserves.