The AFRINIC crisis: a registry at war with its own members

The crisis began inside AFRINIC.

Its own 2021 audit of its database found 2,371,584 IPv4 addresses misappropriated from its pool. Power that answers to no one does not stay clean, and this finding is AFRINIC’s own.

That same year AFRINIC’s management turned on a member.

In March 2021 it gave us 30 days to answer what the Court later called “purported breaches”, or face termination at its “sole discretion”, and in July 2021 its Board resolved to end our membership. That would have taken back the addresses our customers’ networks run on. Three times the Judge in Chambers stopped it, on 29 March, 13 July and 3 December 2021.

Those then running AFRINIC did not accept the Court’s answer.

In July 2021 they defied a court order until they were warned of contempt proceedings, gave the Judge an unconditional undertaking and, in November 2021, withdrew it. They asked the Court to treat our applications as an abuse of its process, and they asked the Government of Mauritius for the immunities of an international organisation. On 19 July 2022 the Court held that Cloud Innovation “cannot be taxed for resorting to an independent court to safeguard its rights”, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied that the request for immunity “cannot be entertained”.

By September 2023 AFRINIC could no longer act for itself.

It had four directors, too few for a board quorum, and no chief executive. On our application the Supreme Court found the orders we sought “fully justified, reasonable, and fair”, placed AFRINIC under the Official Receiver and restrained it from relocating, merging, restructuring or submitting to a takeover. An appeal lodged in AFRINIC’s name without authority failed on 15 October 2024. We sought the receivership to restore good governance at AFRINIC, never to disrupt its work.

The receivership was there to deliver an election, and in 2025 the election was taken from the members.

In June AFRINIC’s Receiver annulled the entire vote over “one disputed proxy”, “silencing hundreds of valid votes”, and his rules for the rerun banned the proxy voting that AFRINIC’s constitution allows. ICANN itself warned that AFRINIC’s ability to function as a regional internet registry was in jeopardy. We do not recognise the Board that came out of the disputed election of September 2025 as lawfully constituted.

In 2026 the doors were closed on the members.

On 4 February AFRINIC’s Board ratified a transfer policy under which the addresses AFRINIC has issued cannot leave its region, and a proposed constitution would take from the members the power to set AFRINIC’s policies. When a rule of the Supreme Court of 9 October 2026 restated that we are a Member, AFRINIC’s Receiver demanded our removal from the register, with copies to ministers, and cited no court order for it.

The crisis ends when AFRINIC goes back to being a registry.

A registry keeps the record and answers to the law like any other company. Courts decide disputes, and their orders are changed only in court. Members elect their Board under the constitution, every eligible member is on the register, and a network is free to leave with its addresses. Those are the things we have gone to court for since 2021, and we ask them for every member.