ICANN’s support for Smart Africa’s state-driven CAIGA initiative raises fears of political capture of AFRINIC and erosion of global multistakeholder governance.
- ICANN funded and legitimised Smart Africa’s CAIGA project, a blueprint enabling governments to override AFRINIC’s community-led governance, contradicting ICANN’s core principles.
- AFRINIC’s board is deepening alignment with Smart Africa, reinforcing fears of coordinated state influence and a continent-wide move toward top-down internet governance.
We can barely go a week without some new controversy erupting around (or within) AFRINIC, the internet registry for Africa. But the latest headlines going around the internet governance mailing lists have shone a blindingly revealing light onto how Kurtis Lindqvist, CEO at ICANN, and the top executives at Smart Africa have been in cahoots to subvert the essence of internet registry operations: bottom-up, community-led governance.
Instead, the future of Africa’s internet will be dictated by state leaders. Community will be an effect, not a cause. And Africa will be an outlier – while the four other regional internet registries will operate as per tradition, AFRINIC will be different, and its community ethos shunned.
These are the stunning but obvious conclusions you have to draw if you read into the recent revelations about Smart Africa’s CAIGA initiative, and ICANN’s funding help, accurately.
For decades, ICANN has held itself up as the world’s premier defender of bottom-up, multistakeholder governance — the model that keeps political actors from dominating the core infrastructure of the global internet. This is the ICANN that once fought for independence from the U.S. government. The ICANN that lectures governments about not meddling in regional internet registries (RIRs). The ICANN that insists community-led decision-making is the only path forward.
And yet, today, ICANN stands accused — credibly, loudly, and from multiple corners of the internet governance ecosystem — of supporting an initiative that would do precisely what it claims to oppose: empower political actors to take control of a regional internet registry, in this case AFRINIC, the RIR for Africa.
Worse still, ICANN didn’t just endorse the initiative, it funded it.
Also Read: Should African communities challenge ICANN’s CAIGA support?
The CAIGA revelation
The controversy is focused on Smart Africa’s proposed Continental Africa Internet Governance Architecture, or CAIGA — a state-centric governance model that would give African governments sweeping oversight over the AFRINIC registry, and therefor over the internet itself.
To many, CAIGA looks like a direct attempt to replace the long-standing community-driven model with one run by ministers, regulators, and heads of state. In Africa — a region where AFRINIC has already endured years of political interference, lawsuits, and governance crises — the proposal appears less like an evolution and more like a hostile takeover.
In her critique, veteran internet governance expert Alice Munyua didn’t mince her words when describing CAIGA: “a state takeover of the African internet.” She warned that CAIGA is a mechanism “to give African governments technical authority over AFRINIC,” effectively nullifying the community’s role.
Under normal circumstances, ICANN would be expected to reject such a proposal outright. Instead, Munyua revealed that ICANN not only endorsed Smart Africa’s CAIGA initiative but financially supported it, contributing $40,000 toward the development of the so-called “Internet Governance Blueprint” that lays out CAIGA’s architecture.
The organization that tells the world “bottom-up governance is sacred” quietly bankrolled a blueprint for top-down state control.
Also Read: Why the Smart Africa CAIGA initiative was created
ICANN’s quiet funding and loud contradictions
The outrage intensified when details of ICANN’s partnership with Smart Africa surfaced. The two organizations signed an MoU in 2024, then entered into a project agreement for Smart Africa to produce the IG Blueprint — the same document that advances CAIGA.
ICANN CEO Kurtis Lindqvist, confronted with criticism from across the community, has tried to reassure the world that ICANN wasn’t supporting CAIGA per se, but only helping Smart Africa “build capacity” and “encourage participation.”
In his November 18, 2025 response, Lindqvist insisted:
“ICANN’s funding of the IG Blueprint development did not include any directive to cover AFRINIC governance, modify AFRINIC, or envision a different RIR structure.”
But the facts don’t line up. Smart Africa’s draft IG Blueprint explicitly proposes reforms to AFRINIC’s governance. It explicitly advocates for a continental authority — CAIGA — that would sit above AFRINIC. And ICANN was not just a bystander: it provided money, administrative support, visibility, and legitimacy to Smart Africa throughout the process.
As Milton Mueller, one of the most respected scholars in global internet governance, put it: “So ICANN, which positions itself as the ultimate manifestation of bottom-up governance by nonstate actors, and which fought for years to rid itself of political oversight by the U.S. government, is supporting Smart Africa, an organization that promotes digital sovereignty, has a board composed of heads of state, and issues rhetoric that calls for political oversight of its Regional Internet Registry.”
It is hard to imagine a more devastating summary of the contradiction.
Why Africa? Why now?
To understand the stakes, you need to understand AFRINIC.
For years, the African RIR has been embroiled in lawsuits, governance failures, resource mismanagement accusations, and attempted state interference. Some governments have openly sought influence over AFRINIC’s elections. Others have attempted to seize AFRINIC’s resources through courts. The environment is fragile.
Into this chaotic landscape, Smart Africa — a political body representing African governments — has arrived with promises of “coordination.” CAIGA is presented as a unifying mechanism. But coordination, in this case, means consolidation of authority. Instead of the internet community deciding AFRINIC’s fate, CAIGA would give the deciding voice to states.
As Munyua put it concisely, CAIGA “seeks to reverse two decades of hard-won norms” in internet governance.
Given AFRINIC’s vulnerabilities, CAIGA poses not a very real threat. Which is why ICANN’s involvement raises such alarm: if ICANN is willing to support a top-down takeover model in Africa, what’s to stop similar arrangements elsewhere?
ICANN’s defence rings hollow
Lindqvist’s rebuttal tried to position ICANN as a neutral actor, merely funding a document, merely participating in discussions, merely supporting “dialogues.” To hear him tell it, ICANN is a guardian of multistakeholder governance, protecting AFRINIC from interference, defending the community, upholding ICP-2 (the RIR governance standard).
But the more Lindqvist denies, the more contradictions emerge:
He claims the IG Blueprint wasn’t meant to cover AFRINIC governance — even though it explicitly does.
He insists ICANN supports bottom-up governance — while partnering with a body led by heads of state.
He stresses ICANN’s neutrality — while providing administrative and financial assistance to Smart Africa’s CAIGA-related activities at ICANN meetings themselves.
He calls CAIGA a “proposal” — while ICANN repeatedly elevates Smart Africa’s platform, giving it legitimacy in the global internet governance arena.
If ICANN was truly neutral, it would not be providing logistical support, visibility, and money for the political body advancing a takeover model.
Mueller calls this behavior “reckless.” Munyua calls it “dangerous.” Many in the community call it “shocking.”
But now there is a fourth piece of evidence — one that makes the situation even more troubling.
AFRINIC’s leadership is cozying up to Smart Africa
A new report from the Transform Africa Summit (TAS) in Conakry in November 2025 reveals that AFRINIC’s board, far from distancing itself from Smart Africa, has been actively reinforcing ties with the very organization pushing CAIGA.
AFRINIC was represented at TAS by board vice-chair Prof. Abdelaziz Hilali and senior staff member Arthur N’guessan, and the tone of AFRINIC’s summary was unmistakably enthusiastic:
- Smart Africa was described as “a long-standing ally.”
- AFRINIC held a “key meeting” with Smart Africa’s Director General to “open the door to deeper collaboration.”
- Both sides reaffirmed the importance of “coordinating technical programmes” and “aligning with continental flagship projects.”
At the very moment Smart Africa is trying to place AFRINIC under a state-centric governance structure, AFRINIC’s leadership is presenting this relationship as a strategic partnership.
This is is the behavior of an institution aligning itself with its potential political overseers. The article makes clear that AFRINIC sees Smart Africa — not the bottom-up community — as the key to its future relevance. Close cooperation with governments is framed not as a threat but as a path to “visibility,” “integration,” and “renewed trust.”
But trust from whom? The community? Or the states that would control AFRINIC through CAIGA?
When AFRINIC and Smart Africa align, ICANN’s role looks even worse
This is the piece that completes the puzzle. ICANN’s support for Smart Africa would be irresponsible even if AFRINIC were distancing itself from CAIGA. But with AFRINIC’s leadership openly collaborating with Smart Africa’s executive leadership, the danger is magnified.
It now appears that:
- Smart Africa wants more influence over AFRINIC.
- AFRINIC’s board is eager to deepen ties with Smart Africa.
- ICANN is providing political, logistical, and financial cover for Smart Africa’s initiatives.
That is a recipe for capture, precisely what bottom-up governance was designed to prevent.
A global threat, not a regional one
If ICANN normalizes a model in which governments can design and impose governance structures on RIRs, several consequences follow:
- The multistakeholder model ceases to be universal.
- It becomes something ICANN defends in wealthy regions and undermines in politically vulnerable ones.
- Other governments will notice.
- If African states can propose a political oversight body for AFRINIC with ICANN’s blessing, why couldn’t governments in Europe or Asia attempt the same?
- RIR independence becomes negotiable.
- The RIR system only works because it is bottom-up and community-driven. Once that principle is violated, the entire architecture becomes unstable.
- ICANN loses credibility.
- The organization cannot preach the gospel of nonstate governance while financing and facilitating state-led governance models.
Which brings us back to the central paradox: How did ICANN — the self-proclaimed champion of bottom-up governance — end up acting as the vector for a top-down political agenda?
The hypocrisy at the heart of ICANN’s behavior
In its public statements, ICANN insists that it defends the multistakeholder model. But actions speak louder.
ICANN funded the development of Smart Africa’s governance blueprint. It provided administrative support for Smart Africa’s CAIGA-related activities at ICANN meetings. It elevated Smart Africa’s role in the Coalition for Digital Africa. And it signed agreements that emboldened Smart Africa at precisely the moment CAIGA was taking shape.
ICANN’s CEO now claims there is “no foregone conclusion” about Africa’s governance future. But the conclusion is obvious to the African internet community, which has watched Smart Africa gain visibility, AFRINIC gain proximity to Smart Africa’s leadership, and ICANN enable it all from the background.
The path ahead
The African internet community now faces an urgent question:
Will AFRINIC remain a community-governed registry, or will it become an institution shaped — and ultimately controlled — by states?
For years, AFRINIC has been fragile. But fragility is not an excuse to abandon principles.
If ICANN genuinely believes in bottom-up governance, it must:
- Withdraw support for CAIGA.
- Condemn state-led oversight of RIRs.
- Stop funding initiatives that undermine community governance.
- Reassert ICP-2 and its protections.
- Demand that AFRINIC maintain independence from political bodies.
Anything less is collaboration in the erosion of the world’s internet governance ecosystem.
Because the real danger is not CAIGA. The real danger is that ICANN — the steward of global DNS stability — is now behaving as though the multistakeholder model is optional, flexible, regional, or negotiable.
If ICANN can betray its core principles in Africa, it can betray them anywhere. And if that happens, the internet as we know it — open, neutral, and governed by its users — will change beyond recognition.
