- ICANN under new CEO Kurtis Lindqvist has abandoned neutrality, using newly imposed rules and threatening derecognition of AFRINIC while ignoring regional legal authority.
- The organisation’s interference in AFRINIC’s elections and operations—despite past inaction during years of corruption—marks a dramatic shift in ICANN’s role, prompting accusations of jurisdictional overreach.
On January 11, 2025, a lawyer from the Mauritian firm Legis And Partners, representing ICANN, visited the AFRINIC building, the internet registry for Africa, to retrieve a document.
We don’t know what that document was nor why he needed to retrieve it on a Saturday morning. We do know that the Official Receiver for AFRINIC, Gowtamsingh Dabee, who was charged with supervising AFRINIC’s election arrangements, and acting as a stand-in executive until a board and CEO could be reconvened, was absent, on vacation.
We also know that performing these kinds of legal activities, on a weekend, without informing the Receiver and while he is not in the country, is at the very least improper, and at worst an unlawful attempt to sidestep due process.
Why would ICANN’s lawyer in Mauritius do this? What was in that document? Why try to retrieve it behind the Official Receiver’s back?
ICANN told BTW Media: “ICANN has been clear and transparent about the fact that it offered the Official Receiver neutral and independent assistance upon his request and within his role. The statement that our external counsel called at AFRINIC’s premises on 11 January 2025 to retrieve a document is categorically false and erroneous. He did not visit AFRINIC’s premises on that date.”
BTW Media has seen time-stamped video of a person that resembles the lawyer in question leaving AFRINIC premises on that date. We have also seen records of his vehicle registration signing in and out of AFRINIC premises on that day. The security guard working at AFRINIC on January 11 has also confirmed that a visit from a lawyer representing ICANN took place on January 11.
BTW Media also reached out to Legis And Partners asking the lawyer what his purpose was. We have not received a response.
ICANN’s increasingly domineering efforts
To anyone watching ICANN’s behaviour over the past few years, it has been obvious that its usually neutral, non-partisan approach to internet governance activities has collapsed since December 2024.
What happened in December 2024? Kurtis Lindqvist was appointed CEO and President.
Particularly regarding AFRINIC, ICANN now is trying to dominate not only the conversations, but the election process too, and has singled out resource holders like Cloud Innovation and lobbying groups like the Number Resource Society for special attention.
In various official letters, published publicly on ICANN’s correspondence page, Lindqvist has accused AFRINIC and the Official Receiver of a lack of transparency, questioned the use of the AFRINIC logo, told it not to engage with the media, questioned AFRINIC over the internet governance ideals of a separate organisation, and finally threatened AFRINIC with derecognition.
In the latest letter, published July 16, 2025, Lindqvist extends his anxieties to cover BTW Media as well, apparently concerned about our thorough coverage of the AFRINIC saga – 50 articles in two weeks.
This recent letter also mentions Cloud Innovation 14 times, and NRS eight times.
Also read: The story of AFRINIC: How Africa’s internet ideal was destroyed from within
ICANN under Lindqvist
Since Lindqvist took the helm at ICANN, there have been numerous activities that would have been unusual, even unthinkable, under the ICANN of old.
December 2024 – the same month he took office – a document called “Implementation and Assessment Procedures for ICP-2 Compliance“ was released with no prior community consultation or public comment period. The date of the ratification was December 24, 2025 – Christmas Eve – a good time to publish something on the sly. This document gives ICANN the power to do exactly what it did a few months later – threaten an internet registry with a ‘compliance review’, and then with derecognition if it fails that review.
This document would appear also to pre-empt the ICP-2 update work taking place currently, which seeks to modernise the ICP-2 document to include the ongoing requirements of Regional Internet Registries. Did ICANN publish its own version of the new ICP-2 document without any community consultation?
January 2025 – the lawyer in Mauritius visited AFRINIC headquarters to retrieve a document while the Official Receiver was absent. ICANN has denied it and appears to have no interest in finding out why its legal representative tried to circumnavigate the proper processes.
March 2025 – John Crain, the ICANN Chief Technology Officer, started the glut of correspondence to AFRINIC and the Receiver, with a letter demanding that AFRINIC continue to allocate IP addresses, even while the board was inquorate and there was no CEO in place.
June 2025 – Lindqvist started his own sequence of letters to the AFRINIC Official Receiver, threatening a compliance review (using the document ratified in December 2024 with no stakeholder engagement).
July 2025 – Lindqvist’s letters continued on July 3 with an astonishing implication that if the Receiver were sharing information with the press, he should not. BTW Media was the media platform in question, and we can confirm we have never received any information from the Official Receiver or officials associated with AFRINIC privately.
And now the most recent letter, dated July 16, which is addressed to the Minister of Information Technology, Communication and Innovation in Mauritius as well as the Official Receiver. Over 15 pages Lindqvist admonishes AFRINIC again for lack of transparency and for failing to answer its previous questions adequately. But most noticeable in this letter is his growing obsession with the company called Cloud Innovation.
Also read: As ICANN threatens to ‘review’ AFRINIC, an elected board is its only hope for survival
Cloud Innovation attention
It is true that Cloud Innovation (CI) has been a central figure in AFRINIC’s story for several years. The IP address service provider, which leases IP addresses to telecom and internet service providers, was involved in several litigation cases against AFRINIC after the registry tried to reclaim the IP addresses it had allocated to CI.
The attempts to reclaim the numbers failed multiple times in the courts, and under normal circumstances the attempts by the registry to reclaim the numbers would stop, what was essentially a local business dispute would conclude, and everyone would go on their way.
But this was AFRINIC, and things are rarely simple when it comes to AFRINIC. As BTW Media revealed in a recent article, AFRINIC representatives had their own reasons for prolonging the lawsuits, among them hourly charges of US$1,000 per hour that were being channelled through a law firm that was not doing the legal work. The likely explanation is that AFRINIC representatives, among them ex-CEO Eddy Kiyahura, were the beneficiaries.
And so, while CI was protecting its business interests and doing so through legal means, AFRINIC continued to thwart its efforts. And so CI fought back, and over the course of 2021-2023 the AFRINIC CEO was barred from his post, the board was disbanded and AFRINIC’s bank account was frozen.
All of this happened because the Supreme Court consistently found in CI’s favour in its judgements, and yet CI became vilified and cast as the ‘bad guy’ – and ICANN’s new CEO clearly agrees with that view.
Lindqvist has abandoned neutrality
But in doing so, he has abandoned neutrality, taking ICANN into open political warfare, against a member of the community that the Supreme Court appears to side with. Indeed, Lindqvist’s insistence that ICANN is now the authority to whom AFRINIC and all its African members must answer, is a direct challenge to the authority of the court, as well as a cultural blind spot that may be his undoing.
His background is Europe-centric. Before ICANN he was the CEO at LINX, the London Internet Exchange. Before that he was co-chair of the NCC-Services WG in the RIPE community. He has also held roles at Netnod in Sweden, and at IETF, within a career that spans 23 different roles – all of them in Europe.
His Euro-centric take on a very African issue smacks of elitism, casting ICANN and himself in the role of ‘African saviour’ – as if Africa cannot save itself.
And it is true, AFRINIC has been a melting pot of corruption and abuse from its own directors, and this needs addressing. This is precisely why CI helped to arrange the Official Receiver’s appointment and why the elections were organised to create a new board, with a new CEO, to get AFRINIC back on track.
ICANN’s election interference
ICANN’s supposed shock at the failure of the election and Lindqvist’s demand for an explanation is somewhat laughable, considering the scrutiny the Official Receiver and the NomCom must have felt as a result of ICANN’s interference in the weeks leading up to the event.
ICANN’s consistent warnings and threats to the Receiver created a climate of fear and super-sensitivity, just like in any autocratic society. And yet when the system collapsed, due to a single questionable vote, ICANN blamed the Receiver and demanded a report.
In recent days CI has announced its agreement with ICANN’s move to review and potentially derecognise AFRINIC. CI has petitioned for AFRINIC to be wound up, citing the impossibility of a successful election if a single dubious vote can derail the entire effort.
Lindqvist’s letter of July 16 appears to respond by backtracking on those initial threats saying “Cloud suggests that moving to dissolve AFRINIC is aligned with ICANN’s requests, ICANN wishes to make clear that nothing could be further from the truth.”
The aggressively charged tone of Lindqvist’s original threat is gone – does he realise perhaps that he is overstepping his jurisdiction?
Where was ICANN when it mattered?
It needs to be said too that while ICANN is now acting like an autocrat, making moves to govern how Africa runs its regional registry, even when the Courts have ruled that it has no locus standi in these proceedings, it could be due to the need to overcompensate for its absence in past years.
AFRINIC’s problems have been going on for 15 years.
Where was ICANN when Ernest Byaruhanga was implicated in manipulating records and overseeing transfers of IPs worth tens of millions of dollars?
Where was ICANN when Benjmin Eshun, an expired director, was trying to take control of AFRINIC through unlawful elections?
Where was ICANN when AFRINIC continually attempted to retrieve legitimately allocated IP addresses from its third-biggest member?
Where was ICANN when AFRINIC’s board violated bylaws, defied courts, and cut off members’ access?
Only now that Lindqvist is in charge does ICANN show up with its threats and over-authoritarian demands, creating a highly sensitised climate that, at least in part, contributed to the failure of the June elections – a failure that ICANN then demanded be explained.
This activity suggests this once neutral organisation is changing dramatically, from the top down.
