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By Mallory Knodel —

Freedom Online; AFRINIC

Freedom Online; AFRINIC
Photo by Henri Calderon.

I joined member states of the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC) as this year’s Chair, the Netherlands, wrapped up 2024 with a joint strategy and coordination session in The Hague.

The meeting kicked off with diplomats sharpening their skills on the Coalition’s core focus areas—from internet freedom principles to the intersection of technical standards and human rights, and the evolving governance of AI. With Christopher Painter, Joyce Hakmeh, and Vanja Skoric we developed trainings to dive deep into these topics. I led the session on human rights considerations in internet and emerging technical standards and how governments and civil society can synergize efforts to move governance from principles to practice—a key theme in the FOC’s latest Joint Statement on the same.

New news

Ripe Optimism: What AFRINIC’s Receivership Means for Stronger Governance of Internet Infrastructure

Just this month a Mauritius court rejected a legal appeal, placing AFRINIC in receivership.

For the past few years one of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIR), AFRINIC, the African Network Information Centre, responsible for IP address allocation in Africa, has been almost completely dysfunctional due to dozens of legal suits that have exploited the community-driven structure characteristic of early internet institutions and the RIR system in particular. Not only have these legal woes impoverished the technical community in Africa, AFRNIC’s leadership and community is tragically missing on the global internet governance stage as well. While AFRINIC staff have continued to maintain core services and operations and members have continued to pay dues, the autonomy of the internet community in Africa has been in legal limbo since 2021.

More than being a critical public internet infrastructure in the region, AFRINIC provides a community through which Africa participates in the global governance of the internet and other digital technologies. A large part of the African participation forming part of the global multistakeholder internet governance traces its roots to AFRINIC. Through its community-led policy development processes, the community decides how IP addresses (IPv4, IPv6) and ASNs (Autonomous System Numbers) will be allocated in the region, reflecting the unique needs and challenges in the area, and in turn influencing policies in the global RIR system. AFRINIC is also instrumental in facilitating the region’s cybersecurity maturity and stability through its capacity-building role and collaboration with the African Union on policies such as regional data governance frameworks and internet access. All these make very critical contributions towards Africa’s digital transformation, and therefore AFRINIC policies and structure of governance should consider its broader scope of responsibility towards the region's digital and economic development.

As the internet has grown, especially with the explosion of mobile devices, gadgets, and ways to connect to the internet, the limited pool of IPv4 addresses has become insufficient to meet the needs of new devices and services. Despite the introduction of IPv6, which offers a vastly larger address space, the transition has been gradual. This slow shift is due to compatibility challenges and the costs associated with upgrading existing infrastructure to support IPv6. It may also be due to the entrenchment of network-layer control points for law enforcement, that the largest enterprises have enough resources and few incentives to migrate, or simply that a scarcity market of IP space is preferable for businesses. Whatever the reasons, IPv4 remain in high demand and  are increasingly scarce. That IPv4 and IPv6 are incompatible and IPv6 is not yet ubiquitous, forces the internet to operate on both, further exacerbating the demand for IPv4 addresses. Despite having received a disproportionately low allocation of IPv4 space by population to begin with, Africa has the largest unused share of IPv4 addresses.

The current AFRINIC woes are a mixture of its unallocated IP addresses and technical community misgovernance and foreign interference. Bluntly put, AFRINIC has been a target for abuse and exploitation, typical of foreign-influenced public infrastructure misgovernance on the continent. Previously before the allocation of IPv4 resources to entities that would resell them outside the region, AFRINIC staff colluded with top leadership to carry out inappropriate allocations. The current challenge originates with Cloud Innovation, a Chinese-owned company registered in Africa that have sued AFRINIC over IP allocations, taking advantage of AFRINIC’s governance structure. Fresh efforts to clean up AFRINIC’s organizational and community governance structures landed it in a court-imposed freeze last year. Georgia Tech researchers labeled Cloud Innovation's actions as "legal terrorism … designed to destroy AFRINIC rather than to preserve its legitimate business interests in a contractual dispute." 

After months of delay, the courts of Mauritius, where AFRINIC is registered, then ruled that AFRINIC would be placed under receivership. The receivership order is distinct from liquidation, with the potential receiver tasked to constitute a new board and appoint a CEO. The court appointed an official receiver, which allows the maintenance of AFRINIC's assets, preservation of its business value and rehabilitation of its governance functions. The decision, however, was challenged by AFRINIC proponents, though any court outcome would have brought a much needed resolution to the Cloud Innovation case and the appeal has only further delayed the proceedings.

The appeal was unsuccessful and at last the court ruled that AFRINIC will indeed be placed under receivership. AFRINIC’s governance issues have only been exacerbated by the legal turmoil, resulting in an incomplete board unable to reach a quorum and thus hindering the appointment of a new CEO since November 2022. Its governance challenges have implications for AFRINIC members, too, including those engaged in ongoing legal disputes with the organization.

While reporting has characterized these developments as dramatic, the fact that AFRINIC’s case has made a breakthrough represents a “wake-up call” and a golden opportunity to strengthen the community and the governance of internet infrastructure in Africa, one of the fastest-growing populations. This wake-up call was answered last year by the Asia Pacific RIR, APNIC, as it rushed to strengthen its governance processes under threat of a hostile takeover of its board by the same actors attempting to destabilize AFRINIC. These measures avoid catastrophe, yes, but they also ensure long-term sustainable legal, compliance and operational strength for these critical institutions. For AFRINIC it is particularly encouraging that ICANN has said it will be deeply engaged in the processes outlined by the receivership. Moreover the Addressing Support Organization of ICANN will be writing a new policy that could establish a new Regional Internet Registry, something that has not been done since they were initially established and a much needed policy addition.

The next steps for the technical community involve actively supporting AFRINIC in the wake of the receivership decision by spreading awareness about the forthcoming elections within the organization. Simultaneously, it's imperative to maintain a strong focus on reinforcing their own community-driven governance processes. Striking a delicate balance between maintaining robust governance structures while ensuring openness is crucial. This balance allows the community to foster an environment that encourages diverse participation, transparency, and accountability, all essential elements in safeguarding the integrity and inclusivity of AFRINIC’s operations and the broader internet governance landscape.

Moving forward, the African internet community should focus on preparing for the upcoming changes within AFRINIC. To ensure a smooth transition and strengthen the organization's governance, it is essential to cultivate a deep, unbiased and diverse pool of candidates for the CEO and board positions. This inclusivity will help bring stability, fresh perspectives, expertise, and regional representation to AFRINIC’s leadership. AFRINIC should also find ways to increase participation in the upcoming elections from its membership base, which has been traditionally low. Additionally in order to maintain the principles of a multistakeholder approach, the community needs to encourage active participation in the upcoming elections from all registered members. Other stakeholders, including civil society, should remain engaged and proactive. 

Additionally, the challenge in the Mauritius court to the receivership involves serious allegations and the court must address these expeditiously and in earnest so that the AFRINIC, RIR and the at-large internet governance community in the region can begin rebuilding.

By involving a wide range of voices and interests, AFRINIC can work towards a more inclusive and representative governance structure that effectively serves the needs of the African internet community while fostering transparency and accountability. This is a call to the entire constellation of internet infrastructure bodies to ensure the strong governance processes of our open, multistakeholder technical communities that administer the critical internet infrastructure at the legal and operational, as well as the technical, level.

The current situation surrounding AFRINIC highlights significant challenges that impact Africa’s digital transformation, especially at a time when the continent tries to leverage AI and the current emerging trends of datafication to transform Africa’s prosperity. The continent continues to face the challenges of poor connectivity as well as high levels of inequalities between countries, not to mention between the region and the rest of the globe. The paralysis of AFRINIC as a public internet resource authority and as a community for African internet governance leaves a huge gap in addressing how the continent can tackle the challenge of uneven datafication and the consequent rise of digital inequality gaps. Let this moment be marked by a turn toward strong mutlistakeholder governance, both internal and external, to protect Africa’s internet community and its assets from future threats.

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Mallory Knodel is a public interest technologist in Washington DC.

Liz Orembo is a researcher and leads International Stakeholder Engagement at Research ICT Africa (RIA).

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