AFRINIC: the Receiver, the courts and the members

On our application, the Supreme Court placed AFRINIC in receivership in September 2023, to preserve its assets and the value of its business and to see that elections are held under its constitution. A Receiver is an officer of the Court. On 11 June 2025, on AFRINIC’s own application, the Court ordered AFRINIC to enter us in its register of members, and the Receiver signed AFRINIC’s written undertaking to rectify its records within 15 days. The 15 days passed without rectification. On 29 October 2026 the Receiver instead sent a legal notice demanding that the Registrar of Companies remove us at once, with copies to the Prime Minister, the ICT Minister, the Attorney General and the State Law Office, and he cited no court order for it. Court orders are changed in court, not by ministers.

• The order of 11 June 2025
• The Receiver’s demand
• Our communiqué of 2 November 2026
• The pattern: ministers instead of judges

Elections held under AFRINIC’s constitution are what the Court placed AFRINIC in receivership for. On our motion, it set the end of June 2025 as the deadline and recorded the Receiver’s undertaking that members admitted without his consent since 19 September 2023 would have no vote. In June 2025 the Receiver annulled the entire election over “one disputed proxy”, “silencing hundreds of valid votes”, and his rules for the new election banned the proxy voting that Article 12.12 of AFRINIC’s constitution allows. In the disputed election of September 2025, Smart Africa’s candidates won seven of the eight seats. We do not recognise that Board as lawfully constituted, and we oppose the application by AFRINIC and its Receiver to have its appointments declared valid: an application for validation is not an order granting it.

• The order of 25 November 2024
• The record: 11 July 2025
• Our statement on the election
• The pattern: governments on a members’ board

By September 2023 AFRINIC had four directors, too few for a board quorum, and no chief executive. We applied to the Supreme Court as a member, and on 12 September 2023 it found AFRINIC’s preliminary objections unsubstantiated and, with our affidavit unrebutted, the orders we sought “fully justified, reasonable, and fair”. It 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 by a former director and by lawyers with no mandate failed on 15 October 2024: the Court of Civil Appeal upheld our objections that it had been brought without authority and restored the receivership. We sought the receivership to restore good governance at AFRINIC, never to disrupt its work.

• The ruling of 11 September 2023
• The judgment of 12 September 2023
• The appeal that failed: 15 October 2024
• Our statement of 14 September 2023

Since 2021 most of the principal decisions in our proceedings with AFRINIC have gone our way. On 13 July 2021 the Supreme Court blocked AFRINIC’s Board resolution against our membership, an order those then running AFRINIC “deliberately flouted”, as 2022 SCJ 253 records. On 3 December 2021 it restrained AFRINIC from terminating our membership until the dispute is finally determined, and on 19 July 2022 it rejected AFRINIC’s claim that we were abusing its process: Cloud Innovation “cannot be taxed for resorting to an independent court to safeguard its rights”. It placed AFRINIC in receivership on our application in 2023 and, on AFRINIC’s own application, ordered it in 2025 to enter us in its register of members. We publish every one of these decisions with the original document.

• The court cases
• The order of 13 July 2021
• The order of 3 December 2021
• The ruling of 19 July 2022
• The pattern: above the courts

AFRINIC belongs to its members, and every eligible Resource Member should be recognised under company law, entered in its register and protected by the rights that come with it. As we said on 1 November 2026: “If thousands of members qualify for registration, put thousands of names on the register.” Our own entry rests on the Court’s orders of 4 April and 11 June 2025, the second made on AFRINIC’s own application; a later ruling corrected only a category and left them in place. The proposed constitution would weaken members’ control over the very directors who oversee the draft. And under the transfer policy ratified on 4 February 2026, in AFRINIC’s own assessment, “AFRINIC will not lose its current resource members to other RIRs in outgoing transfers.” Members should elect their Board freely, and be free to leave.

• Our statement on member rights
• What the proposed constitution would change
• The order of 11 June 2025
• The pattern: a locked exit

Smart Africa is an alliance of 40 governments that acts, in its own words, “under the mandate of its Heads of State and Governments”. In AFRINIC’s disputed election of September 2025, held under rules that banned the proxy voting AFRINIC’s constitution allows, its candidates 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. Courts, not executives, settle AFRINIC’s disputes. In 2025 the executive opened an inspection that, as we said in our constitutional complaint, would call into question judgments the courts had already delivered, and on 7 August 2025, on our application, the Judge in Chambers halted it.

• Smart Africa’s statement
• The pattern: governments on a members’ board
• The order of 7 August 2025

ICANN brought its own application against AFRINIC’s Receiver in the Supreme Court; we were not a party. On 19 June 2025 the Court found that ICANN “has no locus standi”, and it refused ICANN’s demand to dismantle the nominations committee over our classification, calling the insistence “inappropriate”. The ruling corrected a category and left in place the order of 11 June 2025 for our entry in AFRINIC’s register. Days later ICANN itself warned that AFRINIC’s ability to function as a regional internet registry was in jeopardy and that it could withdraw recognition. We asked ICANN and the NRO to designate a successor registry under ICP-2, so that African networks keep their registry services without interruption.

• The ruling of 19 June 2025
• The record: 14 July 2025
• Our proposal to ICANN and the NRO

Cloud Innovation Ltd is a privately held company, established in 2013 and registered in Seychelles, that provides IPv4 addresses to the network operators and businesses that keep people online. We have been a member of AFRINIC since 2013. In 2021 AFRINIC’s management moved to end our membership with a letter sent on the first day of Mauritius’s national lockdown, “when access to justice was very limited”, and the Supreme Court restrained it. Our dispute is not with AFRINIC, which belongs to its members, but with those who have long controlled it. We defend the rule of law, a democratic society, people’s freedom and the constitutional separation of powers, and we pursue every point in court and on the record.

• About the company
• The record: 29 March 2021
• The public record
• Our statements