- Policymakers face unresolved questions on legitimacy, authority and regional autonomy before any new African registry can be implemented.
- ICANN’s recent interventions and AFRINIC’s governance breakdown highlight deep structural risks that CAIGA must address from the outset.
What happened: Africa weighs CAIGA as AFRINIC’s collapse exposes deep governance failures
With AFRINIC widely seen as a “failed registry” after years of governance breakdown, Africa is entering a turning point. The proposed Continental Africa Internet Governance Architecture (CAIGA) is now emerging as a potential replacement — but its implementation is far from straightforward. Stakeholders are demanding clarity on how CAIGA would function, who would run it, and how it will avoid repeating the failures that led to AFRINIC’s collapse.
AFRINIC’s governance crisis has already demonstrated how fragile Africa’s internet resource management has become. The annulment of the 23 June board election over one unverified proxy dispute, resulting in discarded valid votes and public distrust, underscored what many now describe as unworkable election standards. Critics argue that the institution’s governance is “irreparably broken”, with no realistic path back to stability.
Amid this vacuum, Cloud Innovation, AFRINIC’s third-biggest member, has been leading the charge for a dissolution and a full reset. Their formal call to wind up AFRINIC and demand that ICANN and the NRO immediately appoint a new RIR has intensified pressure for structural reform.
But before CAIGA — or any successor authority — can be implemented, Africa must confront a series of unresolved questions that cut to the core of regional autonomy, legitimacy, and control.
Also read: How the CAIGA Initiative Impacts Africa’s Internet Governance
Also read: CAIGA’s rise: What it means for AFRINIC members and operators
Why it’s important
CAIGA’s creation would reshape Africa’s internet governance landscape, but it also introduces major uncertainties that cut to the core of legitimacy, autonomy and institutional trust.
AFRINIC’s collapse has already eroded confidence in existing mechanisms, raising the first key question: who has the democratic legitimacy to establish CAIGA in a way that avoids becoming yet another top-down structure?
At the same time, ICANN’s increasing intervention — including accusations of over-extending its authority, undermining court decisions, and attempting to influence AFRINIC’s leadership — has sparked concerns that CAIGA could struggle to protect Africa’s autonomy if strong safeguards against external pressure are not embedded from the outset.
ICANN’s adoption of the ICP-2 compliance document, bypassing its own multistakeholder processes in what critics call a “quiet power grab”, further intensifies the need for clarity on how a new African RIR would defend bottom-up governance. The final unresolved issue is whether CAIGA can avoid repeating AFRINIC’s governance failures: without transparent elections, credible dispute resolution and stable leadership, the proposed authority risks inheriting the very dysfunctions that led to AFRINIC’s collapse.
As pressure mounts, Africa must resolve these fundamental questions before CAIGA can move forward — otherwise the continent risks simply replacing one institutional crisis with another.
