AFRINIC’s Board: eight seats the members did not freely fill

A registry’s board answers to its members.

AFRINIC’s members elect its Board to oversee the company that keeps their records. The Board does not own AFRINIC, the addresses it records or the networks that run on them, and eight seats speak for no continent.

In July 2021 AFRINIC’s Board resolved to end our membership.

That would have taken back the addresses our customers’ networks run on. On 13 July 2021 the Supreme Court blocked the resolution, an order those then running AFRINIC “deliberately flouted”, as its judgment of 19 July 2022 records.

By September 2023 the Board could no longer act.

AFRINIC had four directors, too few for a board quorum, and no chief executive, and the Supreme Court held that its lawyers could not rely on a 2021 board resolution to appear for it. The next day, on our application, the Court placed AFRINIC in receivership, to see that elections are held under its constitution.

The present Board came out of a rerun.

In June 2025 AFRINIC’s Receiver annulled the entire Board election over “one disputed proxy”, and his rules for the new one banned the proxy voting that Article 12.12 of AFRINIC’s constitution allows. In the disputed election of September 2025 the candidates of a single alliance of 40 governments won seven of the eight seats. The eight were entered as AFRINIC’s registered members on 12 September 2025.

This Board has used its months in office to tighten its hold on the members.

On 4 February 2026 it ratified a transfer policy under which the addresses AFRINIC has issued cannot leave its region. It appointed the six members and the chair of the committee rewriting AFRINIC’s bylaws, a draft that reduces the members’ control over directors. And it supports removing from the register the member whose application to the Court made its own election possible.

We do not recognise this Board as lawfully constituted.

In SC/COM/MOT/000757/2025, AFRINIC and its Receiver have asked the Supreme Court to declare that the September candidates were validly appointed, and we oppose that application. An application for validation is not an order granting it. We demand the removal of the purported directors through the competent legal procedures, with registry services continuing under lawful authority.

AFRINIC’s members are owed a Board they have chosen.

That means an election under the constitution as it is written, with the proxy voting it allows, every eligible Resource Member on the register and able to vote, and directors who answer to the members and to the courts. Members elect the people who keep their records; nobody else should choose them.