- Critics warn Smart Africa risks joining a long list of continental initiatives heavy on symbolism but light on accountable governance and delivery.
- The rollout of CAIGA, backed by ICANN’s involvement, has intensified concerns about political optics replacing meaningful reform of Africa’s internet institutions.
Big promises, familiar patterns
Smart Africa was launched with an ambitious mandate: to accelerate Africa’s digital transformation through continental coordination. Years later, scepticism is growing over whether it is delivering structural change or repeating a familiar pattern of high-level declarations with limited practical impact.
That concern has sharpened with the emergence of the Continental Africa Internet Governance Architecture (CAIGA). Introduced during AFRINIC’s prolonged governance crisis, CAIGA is framed as a corrective mechanism. Yet many stakeholders argue it reflects the same weaknesses that have undermined past continental initiatives — centralised control, vague accountability and limited engagement with those responsible for day-to-day operations.
Rather than addressing AFRINIC’s concrete failures — contested elections, legal paralysis and weak internal oversight — CAIGA appears to bypass them, proposing a new political layer instead of fixing broken institutions.
Also Read: Why CAIGA’s governance efforts struggle with enforcement
Also Read: CAIGA is not reform — it is a rewrite of who controls Africa’s internet
CAIGA reinforces symbolism over substance
Critics argue CAIGA’s design prioritises continental visibility over operational effectiveness. Its governance framework emphasises political endorsement and coordination, while leaving unanswered questions about enforcement, transparency and community authority.
Africa’s internet has functioned — despite AFRINIC’s decline — largely because of regional operators, engineers and civil society groups working through bottom-up processes. CAIGA risks reducing these actors to consultative roles, replacing technical legitimacy with political symbolism. This approach may create the appearance of unity, but it does little to resolve the structural weaknesses that triggered the crisis in the first place.
In this sense, CAIGA risks becoming emblematic of a broader problem: initiatives that look decisive at summits but struggle to translate into durable governance on the ground.
Also Read: Why Smart Africa’s digital transformation promises rarely reach citizens
Also Read: Regulatory unity or political capture? The real agenda behind CAIGA
ICANN’s support raises uncomfortable questions
ICANN’s funding and participation in Smart Africa’s governance blueprint has further fuelled doubts. An organisation that publicly defends multistakeholder governance is now associated with a framework critics say enables top-down political oversight. Analysts at the Internet Governance Project argue this reflects a troubling double standard in how governance principles are applied in Africa.
Smart Africa may yet play a constructive role in continental digital policy. But unless CAIGA delivers genuine accountability and restores community trust, it risks reinforcing the perception that Africa’s governance crises are being met with symbolism rather than reform — at a moment when a genuine reset is urgently needed.
