- By layering political control over the existing technical registry model, CAIGA risks undermining the independence and operational stability of regional internet governance.
What is CAIGA and what’s proposed
CAIGA — the Continental Africa Internet Governance Architecture — is a proposal from Smart Africa (in cooperation with ICANN) to create a pan‑African council of regulators and states, intended to coordinate internet policy, IP‑address resource management, cybersecurity and digital‑infrastructure governance across the continent.
However, many in the African Internet community decry CAIGA as a “quiet coup” — a shift from the existing bottom‑up, technical and community‑driven governance model to a top‑down, state‑dominated authority.
Risks to established collaboration and multistakeholder governance
Under CAIGA, power over critical decisions on IP‑resources and governance could rest with regulators and government‑appointed bodies — not with the diverse mix of civil society, private sector, network engineers and ISPs that have historically governed regional registries.
This risks undermining trust, reducing transparency, and making decision‑making slower or more politicised — undermining stable collaboration across states and communities.
Also read: CAIGA and digital sovereignty: What it means for African countries
Also read: Why Africa’s internet community is concerned about CAIGA
What CAIGA could change — and the consequences
If adopted, CAIGA might reshape how African states collaborate on Internet governance in several ways:
- Continental policy alignment: CAIGA could standardise data‑protection, IP, cybersecurity and regulation policies across states — which might ease cross‑border digital cooperation and foster regional cohesion.
- State‑driven coordination: Governments could more directly influence policy and resource distribution — potentially giving African states stronger leverage in global governance fora.
- Risk of fragmentation: But by sidelining technical communities and civil‑society stakeholders, CAIGA could alienate core contributors to Internet stability (network engineers, ISPs, NGOs), fragmenting consensus and undermining long‑term cooperation.
- Erosion of neutrality and trust: The shift from a neutral, member‑driven registry to a politicised institution may discourage external partners, reduce transparency, and jeopardise the perceived legitimacy of African internet governance as a whole.
CAIGA’s ambition to unify African internet governance under a continental political‑regulatory framework might — on paper — promise stronger coordination and a louder collective voice abroad. But in practice, the move threatens to upheave a delicate balance: replacing decades of bottom‑up, multistakeholder collaboration with top‑down political control.
For many stakeholders, CAIGA represents not just reform — but a risky gamble on Africa’s digital future, one that could fracture trust, complicate collaboration, and compromise the very neutrality that underpins stable, cross‑state internet cooperation.
