AFRINIC’s 2025 election: one disputed vote, hundreds silenced

The 2025 election happened because we went to court for it.

On our application, the Supreme Court placed AFRINIC in receivership on 12 September 2023, to preserve its assets and to see that elections are held under its constitution within six months. On 15 October 2024 the Court of Civil Appeal restored that order and gave the Official Receiver two months to complete the election process. When that deadline could not be met we went back, and on 25 November 2024, on our motion, the Court ordered the election process conducted by the end of June 2025. It recorded the Receiver’s undertaking that members admitted without his consent since 19 September 2023 would have no vote.

In June 2025 the members voted, and their votes were thrown away.

Voting was suspended on the day, 23 June, and AFRINIC’s Receiver then annulled the whole Board election over “one disputed proxy”, “silencing hundreds of valid votes”. Neither step appears supported by the Court’s mandate, AFRINIC’s bylaws or the election guidelines. One disputed vote should never silence hundreds of valid ones.

For the rerun, the Receiver wrote his own rules.

They banned proxies and powers of attorney and allowed online voting only, although Article 12.12 of AFRINIC’s constitution permits proxy voting and the Court had ordered an election under that constitution. His election guidelines claimed priority in any conflict of interpretation, so long as they kept to the bylaws’ “spirit”. Authority to organise an election does not include authority to remove a voting method the constitution expressly allows: otherwise the organiser chooses which rules bind him and certifies his own compliance. He had also obtained an extension of his mandate to 30 September 2025 without our knowledge or consent, though the receivership began on our application.

The rerun was held in September 2025 under those rules.

The candidates of a single alliance of 40 governments won seven of the eight seats on the Board. AFRINIC belongs to its members, who elect its Board: a registry is not a continental government, and its Board should not be filled with the candidates of an alliance of governments. The eight were entered as AFRINIC’s registered members on 12 September 2025. On our information, more than 2,000 resource members, the networks that are supposed to elect them, have been left off the register.

The result of September 2025 is not settled.

In SC/COM/MOT/000757/2025, AFRINIC and its Receiver have applied to the Supreme Court for his discharge, the end of the receivership and a declaration that the September candidates were validly appointed. We oppose that application: our case is that the departures from the constitution exceeded the Receiver’s mandate, breached the Court’s orders and failed to produce valid appointments. An application for validation is not an order granting it. We do not recognise this Board as lawfully constituted.

A fair election is one held under the constitution as it is written.

That means the proxy voting Article 12.12 allows, every eligible Resource Member on the register and able to vote, and no organiser who sets aside the rules that bind him. In January 2025 we called for a free and fair election under judicial supervision, and we call for it still. Members elect the people who keep their records; nobody else should choose them.