Important information for South African Internet users

A court-appointed receiver has set a date for elections to reconstitute the board of the African Network Information Centre (Afrinic), a vital part of the global Internet.

The elections follow a series of legal battles in the Mauritian courts, where Afrinic is incorporated, which left the organisation paralysed.

Gowtamsingh Dabee, the official receiver appointed by the courts, recently informed Internet resource holders that he secured an extension from the court to hold the election on 23 June 2025.

Following the election date announcement, Afrinic sent members details about the requirements they must meet to be eligible to vote.

While many people may find matters of Internet governance dry, a lot is at stake in these forthcoming elections.

Afrinic has been rocked by allegations of corruption, and behind the scenes, competing interest groups are manoeuvring to seize or retain control of the organisation.

Their motivations vary — from defending commercial footholds in the lucrative IP address market to advancing ideological or political agendas.

However, the common thread is clear: influence over Afrinic means power over a critical part of Africa’s internet infrastructure.

Afrinic is Africa’s Regional Internet Registry (RIR), one of five global bodies tasked with managing the allocation of Internet resources.

These include precious Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, specifically IP version 4 (IPv4) addresses, which are the reason Afrinic finds itself in its current predicament.

Afrinic was rendered headless and rudderless by an onslaught of court cases from a company called Cloud Innovation and its allies.

The dispute arose after Afrinic initiated proceedings to revoke the large blocks of IP addresses allocated to Cloud Innovation, threatening the heart of the company’s business model.

IPv4 addresses are scarce and precious resources, which has resulted in a lucrative secondary market emerging for them.

According to IP broker IPXO, a company in much the same business as Cloud Innovation, IP addresses currently sell for around $50 each.

Between 2013 and 2016, Afrinic issued nearly 6.3 million IPv4 addresses to Cloud Innovation in four tranches, which are today worth nearly $315 million (R5.7 billion).

The assignments were controversial even back then, when the resale value of IP addresses was much lower.

Several Afrinic members questioned how a brand new member acquired a block of over a million IP addresses on their first application, when they could only get a few thousand at a time.

Critics also took issue with the fact that Cloud Innovation was headed by a Chinese national and incorporated in the Seychelles, although few expressed this opinion publicly.

Although Seychelles falls within Afrinic’s service region, its reputation as a haven for illicit corporate activity added to the unease.

A report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published in June 2014 described the island nation as “an offshore magnet for money launderers and tax dodgers”.

Responding to the criticism at the time, former Afrinic CEO and Internet Hall of Fame inductee Adiel Akplogan defended the allocation of IP addresses to Cloud Innovation.

“This allocation followed the same process and procedure as any other request submitted to the IP analysts,” Akplogan wrote on a mailing list where the issue was being discussed.

“In terms of application and interpretation of the current policy, nothing in this one was different.”

Afrinic staff also clarified that, due to the size of the IPv4 block in question, the hostmaster team produced an evaluation report, which was escalated to executive management for approval.

Members were also reminded that Afrinic’s policies at the time did not prohibit out-of-region use of IP addresses.

If the community wished to restrict such usage, they would need to propose and adopt a policy amendment.

While such a policy was being discussed at the time, nothing came of it.

Notably, while the controversy was still unfolding, Cloud Innovation had a pending request before Afrinic for a second allocation of over a million IP addresses.

Akplogan, responding to a follow-up question, explained that Afrinic would take action if it later emerged that a resource member was not using their IP addresses as justified in their application.

Going on the attack

Six years, two Afrinic CEOs, and 5.3 million IPv4 addresses later, the Afrinic board of directors decided to do exactly that — take action against Cloud Innovation.

On 23 June 2020, Afrinic wrote to Cloud Innovation identifying breaches of its Registration Service Agreement.

Afrinic argued that Cloud Innovation was leasing the addresses to third parties, rather than using them for the operational needs originally declared in its justification.

Its alleged violations included not using the IPv4 addresses to build infrastructure in Africa, which Afrinic said Cloud Innovation had promised to do.

Cloud Innovation dismissed Afrinic’s letter with contempt, arguing that Afrinic’s approach was procedurally flawed and ignored the realities of how the Internet worked.

It said Afrinic had no mechanism by which resource members could notify the RIR if they were using their IP addresses for different purposes.

It also brought up that Afrinic members never introduced policies to prevent the region’s IPv4 addresses from being used elsewhere in the world.

What followed was a series of injunctions, appeals, and counter-applications spanning dozens of distinct cases. Afrinic maintains a list of court cases it’s involved in on its website.

At one stage, Afrinic’s bank account was frozen, putting it in jeopardy of being unable to pay its bills or make payroll.

It all came to a head in the lead-up to Afrinic’s Annual General Members’ Meeting on 2 June 2022, when elections to fill vacant board seats were held.

Several Afrinic members came forward with reports that an organisation called the Number Resource Society (NRS) contacted them with offers to buy their votes.

The NRS should not be confused with the Number Resource Organisation (NRO), an ICANN-affiliated body established in 2003 to coordinate the world’s RIRs.

According to the reports, the NRS offered people between $1,000 (over R18,000) and $5,000 (over R90,000) to vote for candidates aligned with Cloud Innovation.

The NRS and Cloud Innovation denied this when MyBroadband asked about the allegations.

Cloud Innovation’s founder argued that bribing enough resource members to meaningfully affect the vote was financially infeasible.

This raises an interesting question — how much would it cost to buy the majority of the vote in an Afrinic board election?

Buying Afrinic votes — an analysis

Firstly, each member only gets one vote. Voting power is not proportional to resources held.

Afrinic last reported in March 2024 that it had 2,290 resource members after growing by 187 members in 2023.

Assuming the number of resource members has increased to 2,500, and the average payment is $3,000, it would cost $3,753,000 (over R68 million) to buy 50% plus one vote.

Cloud Innovation’s sister company, Larus Limited,  leases IP addresses from around $0.32 (R5.80) per month.

If Cloud Innovation leases out its entire pool of IPs from Afrinic for a year, that would generate nearly $23.8 million (roughly R432 million) in annual revenue.

Although it is improbable that Cloud Innovation leases out every IP address in its assignment, it would only need about 16% occupancy to break even.

However, realistically, a small fraction of Afrinic members vote in elections. In 2018, only 177 votes were cast in a highly controversial election.

Therefore, assuming roughly 10% of Afrinic members would actually vote, it could cost as little as $378,000 (R6.9 million) to buy enough votes to guarantee the election outcome.

Election rigging allegations

At the same time that several Afrinic members reported being approached by the NRS, Cloud Innovation alleged that the Afrinic board was rigging the election.

Several candidates friendly to Cloud Innovation’s cause were put forward as nominees for the 2022 board election, and the nomination committee (nomcom) rejected all of them.

Afrinic has refused to divulge specifics on why the candidates were not permitted to stand, only saying that they didn’t meet the requirements.

The matter was once again taken to the Mauritian courts, which granted an interdict blocking the elections.

A now-defunct South African ISP that is leasing out its IP address space, Crystal Web, struck the final paralysing blow with an interdict that effectively rendered the Afrinic board inquorate.

With the board inquorate, it was argued before the courts that the CEO’s contract could not be renewed, and no one could instruct legal counsel to represent the organisation in court.

With Afrinic completely paralysed, Cloud Innovation asked the Mauritian courts to appoint an official receiver to properly reconstitute the board and see a new CEO appointed.

Industry veterans in South Africa who spoke on condition of anonymity and have no love for Cloud Innovation supported this move.

Another salvo of injunction applications from a former Afrinic board member delayed the process, and caused the first receiver to be removed and another appointed.

What resource members must do

The new official receiver, Gowtamsingh Dabee, has scheduled this crucial Afrinic board election for 23 June 2025.

He also appointed Afrinic’s head of value-added services, Yogesh Chadee, as the election committee chair.

For the nomination committee, Dabee appointed several British barristers:

• Simon Nicholas Davenport — Chairman of the Nomination Committee.
• Nicholas Davenport, a senior member of the English Bar, will oversee:
  • Nicholas George Leah
  • Priscellia Elouise Robinson
  • George Hayden Penny

All three individuals under Davenport are qualified barristers in England and Wales and regulated by the Bar Standards Board.

Although this new nomcom has not yet revealed its list of candidates, Chadee has published the requirements for Afrinic resource members to vote in the upcoming elections.

The election will be in a hybrid format, allowing e-voting and in-person voting at Afrinic’s polling station in Mauritius.

To register for e-voting, members must be in good standing with their membership paid up. They must also submit the particulars of their designated e-voting representative.

Members must submit these details before 23:59 Mauritian time on Monday, 2 June 2025.

E-voting representatives may be designated by power of attorney. However, the Internet Service Providers’ Association of South Africa (ISPA) has warned members to be wary of groups soliciting their power of attorney for this purpose.

“If members are approached by any entity requesting access to their Afrinic credentials or proposing the signing of a Power of Attorney, report these incidents immediately to ISPA and Afrinic,” it said.

“Before considering any requests to share access or authority over network resources, seek advice from trusted legal and technical professionals to fully understand the potential implications.”

ISPA said it was committed to supporting its members in maintaining the security and integrity of their network resources.

“Collective vigilance is essential to uphold the trust and stability of our shared internet infrastructure,” it said.