- CAIGA could fundamentally alter how internet policy is made in Africa, shifting authority away from communities towards political coordination.
- Critics warn the model promoted by Smart Africa and supported by ICANN risks entrenching top-down policy-making at a moment of institutional fragility.
A quiet shift in how decisions get made
Africa’s internet policy has traditionally evolved through a fragmented but bottom-up process. Engineers, network operators, civil society groups and regulators have debated standards and rules in open forums, even as AFRINIC’s governance failures increasingly strained that model. CAIGA, the Continental Africa Internet Governance Architecture, proposes a very different approach.
Rather than repairing existing policy pathways, CAIGA introduces a continental framework in which political coordination plays a central role. Critics argue this represents a quiet but consequential shift: from policy shaped by technical consensus to policy guided by intergovernmental alignment. In practice, this could mean that decisions about internet infrastructure, data governance and digital regulation are shaped upstream by political bodies before communities are meaningfully consulted.
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From consultation to endorsement
One of the most contentious aspects of CAIGA is how it reframes participation. While Smart Africa’s language emphasises inclusivity, the structure appears to privilege endorsement over deliberation. Community actors may still be consulted, critics say, but final authority would rest elsewhere.
This matters because internet policy is not abstract. Decisions about routing, address management, security standards and data flows have direct operational consequences. By repositioning policy-making within a political framework, CAIGA risks slowing responsiveness, diluting technical input and prioritising consensus among states over workable outcomes on the ground.
For stakeholders already frustrated by AFRINIC’s paralysis, this feels less like reform and more like substitution.
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ICANN’s role and the credibility problem
ICANN’s involvement has added to the unease. As an organisation that has long defended bottom-up policy development, its financial and institutional support for a politically led framework has raised accusations of inconsistency. Analysts at the Internet Governance Project have argued that this risks creating a double standard, where Africa becomes a testing ground for governance models rejected elsewhere.
At a time when Africa’s internet governance urgently needs trust-building and institutional repair, critics argue CAIGA could permanently change how policy is made — without clear consent from the communities most affected. That prospect, more than the framework itself, is what continues to alarm stakeholders calling for a genuine reset rather than a political redesign.
