Summary

  • Registry authority over African Internet number resources moved through a dated chain of instruments between 30 September 2004 and 12 April 2005: provisional ICANN approval, an operational handover at the RIPE NCC on 21 February 2005, an NRO readiness assessment, full ICANN recognition on 8 April 2005, and IANA's first allocation of 41/8 on 12 April 2005.
  • That chain split service continuity from contract continuity. African LIRs were redirected to AFRINIC and lost RIPE NCC portal access from 21 February 2005, but remained legally RIPE NCC members under the RIPE NCC Standard Service Agreement until ICANN's final recognition, after which they had to sign a contract with AFRINIC.
  • The obligations that travelled with the transfer were holder-specific and contractual. No public continuity, escrow or successor obligation imposed on the transferring registry has been located in this chain.
  • Today the recognised holder operates under a court-appointed receivership, a section 230 declared-company inspectorate and an annulled 2025 board election. The forum that holds the ring over the holder is the Supreme Court of Mauritius.
  • The documents disagree with each other in specific, checkable places: two different receivership dates, an appellate disposition that reads ambiguously in excerpt, and resolution dates that differ from announcement dates.

The commission behind this research is the authority chain itself — which instrument moved what, on which date, and what it left in place afterwards. The detail matters because the subsidiary questions now being litigated in Mauritius are built on top of it: who was a lawful member, who was properly appointed receiver, whether a conversion of membership class was valid, and who was entitled to elect directors. Those are corporate-law questions asked of a company whose only public function is holding a registry. This article works through the registry instruments first, then the corporate control surface, and keeps the two categories distinct.

What registry authority is made of

Registry authority is not a single thing, and treating it as one is how disputes over registries become incoherent. At least four distinct layers are usually being conflated.

The outermost layer is the allocation of address blocks by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to a regional registry. IANA's IPv4 address space registry lists 041/8 as ALLOCATED to AFRINIC, dated 2005-04, and distinguishes such ALLOCATED blocks from LEGACY blocks administered elsewhere (IANA, IPv4 Address Space). That entry is the durable record of the transfer at the global layer. It does not describe who inside Africa may use the addresses, and it does not describe what happens if the recipient fails.

The second layer is the contractual relationship between the registry and each holder. This is where allocation and assignment terms live: fees, the right to use a block, the conditions on which a block may be transferred or recovered, and the dispute mechanism if the registry acts against a holder. Nothing at the IANA layer substitutes for it.

The third layer is operational: who actually maintains the registration database and who holds the authority over reverse DNS delegation. A holder whose block is recorded but whose in-addr.arpa delegation points nowhere has an asset with a broken operational path.

The fourth layer is corporate. Someone must be able to sign the contracts, adopt the policies, employ the staff and be sued. The registry function can be perfectly defined on paper while the corporation that performs it is incapacitated — which is precisely the configuration that now exists in Mauritius.

This article is concerned with the moments when layers one, two and four all changed hands, because that is what the 2004–2005 transition did.

The chain, in order

On 30 September 2004 the ICANN Board gave provisional approval to AFRINIC's application for recognition and to its transition plan, in resolutions 04.82 and 04.83, and directed the President to keep working with AFRINIC, ARIN, RIPE and APNIC through the Number Resource Organization to assist a smooth transition and the preparation of a revised application for full recognition in conformance with ICP-2 and the then-current ASO Memorandum of Understanding (ICANN Board resolutions, 30 September 2004). The formulation matters: the Board did not yet recognise a registry. It approved an application and a plan, and tied the next step to another entity's criteria and to a memorandum between address organisations.

ICANN announced that provisional recognition publicly on 14 October 2004, describing it as the last stage before full recognition and stating that AfriNIC had begun managing Internet number resources for the Africa region, including IPv4 and IPv6 addresses; the incumbent registries were described as supporting it with financial contributions, training and information sharing (ICANN, 14 October 2004). The announcement date and the resolution date are three weeks apart — a small gap that has propagated into secondary summaries ever since.

The operational handover came next, and it came before final recognition. The RIPE NCC's own account states that AFRINIC began operating as a fully functional registry for the African region from 21 February 2005; that from that date African LIRs' resource requests were redirected to AFRINIC and the RIPE NCC LIR Portal was made unavailable to African LIRs; that until ICANN's final recognition those LIRs were still legally members of the RIPE NCC, with assignments made under the RIPE NCC Standard Service Agreement; and that after final recognition all services were transferred and LIRs needed to sign a contract with AFRINIC (RIPE NCC, RIPE NCC to AFRINIC Transition).

That single paragraph is the most important structural fact in this file. On 21 February 2005 the operational path changed, but the legal path did not. For roughly seven weeks, an African LIR wanting address space was told to ask AFRINIC, while its membership and its service agreement remained with the RIPE NCC.

IANA's evaluation report of 8 April 2005 records the bridging step: AFRINIC submitted its application with a detailed transition plan in September 2004; on 21 February 2005 the Chairman of the NRO, who was also the CEO of the RIPE NCC, and the CEO of AFRINIC jointly communicated the NRO's favourable assessment of AFRINIC's readiness for final approval and recognition; and IANA staff monitored the transition of information and registration responsibilities and concluded that AFRINIC met all conditions specified in ICP-2 (IANA, Report on Recognition of AfriNIC, 8 April 2005).

The transferor's chief executive and the transferee's chief executive signed the same readiness communication. That is efficient, and it is also the reason the assessment cannot be treated as independent assurance: the party giving up the registry and the party taking it over were jointly certifying that the takeover was ready.

On 8 April 2005 the ICANN Board adopted resolutions 05.25 and 05.26 recognising AfriNIC as a fully approved and recognised Regional Internet Registry to provide IP address registration and other services for the Africa service region; the resolution records the earlier provisional recognition and states that the President reviewed the application and the IANA report and determined full conformance with the criteria in ICP-2 (ICANN Board resolutions, 8 April 2005).

Four days later the global layer moved. IANA's General Manager announced on 12 April 2005 the allocation of the IPv4 /8 block 41/8 to AfriNIC, identified as the first allocation to AfriNIC after its recognition as a Regional Internet Registry (IANA announcement via NANOG archive, 12 April 2005). ICANN's own announcement of 14 April 2005 confirmed that AfriNIC had received its first allocation of numbering resources, including IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers for the Africa region, and described the allocation chain: IANA allocates blocks to the five regional registries, who distribute them to local ISPs and networking companies (ICANN, 14 April 2005).

The NRO's own account adds a financial detail: the existing registries — ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC and the RIPE NCC — supported AFRINIC's emergence including a contribution of US$100,000 for the set-up of its operations (NRO, Recognition of AFRINIC as the Fifth RIR). AFRINIC's own history page covers the same founding period from the receiving institution's perspective (AFRINIC, history).

Read in sequence, the chain is unusually clean for a piece of Internet governance: a conditional approval, a published plan, an operational cut-over, a joint readiness certification, a final recognition under named criteria, and an allocation four days later. There is no secrecy in it. There is also, in everything located here, no instrument that obliges anyone to keep the registry running if the recipient later fails.

Where service continuity and contract continuity came apart

The RIPE NCC account describes a deliberate effort to minimise operational impact on LIRs: all transitions were completed by 21 February 2005 so that African LIRs would not be caught mid-request. The same account says that the contract transfer followed recognition and that LIRs then needed to sign with AFRINIC.

Those are two different clocks. The service clock ran out on 21 February 2005. The contract clock ran until final recognition on 8 April 2005, and the signing exercise presumably ran later still — the excerpt of the RIPE NCC page does not give the completion date for the contract-transfer exercise, and this article does not assert one.

The gap has consequences that are easy to state and hard to remedy. During it, an African LIR's resource request was processed by an organisation with which it had no service agreement, while its agreement was with an organisation that no longer accepted its requests. Disputes, if any had arisen in those weeks, would have had to be filed in the wrong forum by either route.

More importantly for the present day: what bound a holder after April 2005 was the AFRINIC contract it signed, not the RIPE NCC Standard Service Agreement it left behind. The RIPE NCC retained no continuing registry role in the African region on this record. A holder's remedies against registry decisions therefore travelled to AFRINIC with the membership, and stayed there.

That is a structural observation, not an accusation. Registries contract with their members; that is how the system is designed. But it is the reason the current litigation in Mauritius has resource-holder consequences even though the litigation is about corporate governance. The entity that holds the other side of every African resource contract is the entity whose board cannot currently be constituted through an undisputed election.

What the transfer did not carry

The falsifiable part of this investigation is the negative: no instrument imposing a continuity, escrow or successor obligation on the transferring registry has been located in the chain documented above. The 30 September 2004 resolution conditions recognition on conformance with ICP-2 and the ASO Memorandum; the IANA report conditions recognition on ICP-2 criteria; the 8 April 2005 resolution records that conformance; and the RIPE NCC's own transition page describes handover mechanics and contract substitution. None of these, on the evidence inspected, addresses what happens if AFRINIC itself becomes unable to function.

That is a specific and testable statement. If an executed 2004–2005 instrument is published that obliges the RIPE NCC, the NRO or any other body to preserve the African registry's data, delegations or contracts independently of AFRINIC's fate, this conclusion fails. The author would rather the record showed one.

What does accompany the transfer is a governance expectation of a different kind: ICP-2's criteria, which the IANA report invokes, are about how a regional registry should be constituted and operated, not about what happens when it stops. Conformance was assessed once, before operations, and monitored during the transition of responsibilities. Nothing here describes periodic re-assessment of the recognised registry against those criteria.

The control surface that replaced the registry argument

Between September 2023 and July 2025 the question of who holds the ring over AFRINIC's decisions moved into the courts and the government gazette of Mauritius.

In an oral judgment delivered on 12 September 2023, the Supreme Court of Mauritius, Commercial Division, restrained and prohibited AfriNIC from relocating and/or subjecting itself to a takeover, merger, restructuring or management control in any manner; appointed the Official Receiver to hold the ring and preserve the status quo and the value of the business; and directed the Official Receiver to ensure that the election process under AFRINIC's constitution was carried out so that a proper board could be constituted and a CEO appointed, with completion within six months (AfriNIC Ltd v Cloud Innovation Ltd & Anor, 2024 SCJ 473).

The Court of Civil Appeal judgment reported as 2024 SCJ 473 restored the 12 September 2023 order and substituted a two-month deadline for the whole election process, describing reconstitution of the Board as a matter of the utmost urgency (same judgment). AFRINIC's own communiqué dates the appellate outcome to 15 October 2024 and characterises it as a dismissal of the appeal, maintaining the receivership (AFRINIC-Announce, declaration as declared company).

The excerpted appellate wording is internally ambiguous on that point — the passage reads as setting aside the appeal while restoring the order under appeal — and this article records the ambiguity rather than resolving it. The practical effect is not ambiguous: the receivership continued, and so did the court's election timetable.

The timetable then slipped in a way that is documented from more than one direction. The 2025 Board election was held on 23 June 2025, and the Receiver annulled the election process on 26 June 2025 following concerns about irregularities related to voter documentation, which were formally reported to the appropriate authorities for investigation; the Receiver petitioned the Supreme Court for a limited extension of the mandate in order to organise new, fully verified elections (AFRINIC, annulment of the 2025 board election process). Those concerns are described as reported, not as adjudicated.

On 20 June 2025, before the election was held, ICANN announced a court ruling that reinforced its call for fair AFRINIC board elections and required the receiver to make a communiqué to members (ICANN, 20 June 2025). The underlying ruling is not the same document as the announcement, and this article treats the announcement as the interested party's description of it.

Then the executive instruments arrived. General Notice No. 1045 of 2025 in the Extraordinary Government Gazette of 18 July 2025 designated AfriNIC a declared company under section 230 of the Companies Act 2001, and enjoined the Registrar of Companies to require an inspector to investigate AFRINIC's affairs. Proclamation No. 10 of 2025 records that designation, the Registrar's duty under section 231(1), the section 229 qualification requirements, and appoints Hon. N. F. Oh San-Bellepeau, Puisne Judge, as inspector, released from all judicial duties until Tuesday 30 September 2025 (Proclamation No. 10 of 2025).

The inspector's terms of reference are where this file stops being a story about a registry and becomes a story about who was entitled to act at all. They include: whether Cloud Innovation Ltd had locus standi as a resource member to have AFRINIC placed in receivership under section 178; whether the Official Receiver and Mr Gowtamsingh Dabee were properly appointed as receivers; whether the receivers acted in the best interests of the company and its members and in accordance with the constitution, including in the process of electing directors; whether a conversion from resource member to registered member "under the guise of a Court Order" is illegal, fraudulent and void; whether the winding-up petition is frivolous and vexatious; who were the lawful registered members and directors on the designation date; whether abusive or concerted action was taken to paralyse the company; whether offences under sections 332(1) and 334 of the Companies Act were committed; and whether disciplinary action against legal advisers should be contemplated (Proclamation No. 10 of 2025).

Two features of that list deserve emphasis. First, several terms of reference are directed at the standing and conduct of the parties who brought the company into receivership — the inspector is being asked to examine the foundation of the proceeding, not merely its administration. Second, membership class is itself in issue. In a membership organisation whose members hold registry resources, a dispute over who is a resource member and who is a registered member is a dispute over who may vote, and therefore over who may constitute the board that signs the contracts described earlier.

The Proclamation also recites that two successively appointed receivers failed to conduct the Board election within court-imposed timeframes and that no new IP address had been issued to Africa since November 2024. Those recitals are the executive's factual assertions, and they conflict in one particular with AFRINIC's own account: the Proclamation places the receivership "in or about 2024", while AFRINIC's communiqué dates it to 12 September 2023. The judgment excerpt itself supports 12 September 2023.

The discrepancy is worth recording because the same Proclamation is the instrument that appoints the investigator of the dates.

AFRINIC's communiqué also states that a Supreme Court order of 26 June 2025 gave the court-appointed Receiver a deadline of 30 September 2025 to conduct Board elections, and that new IPv4 and IPv6 allocations resumed exceptionally on 1 July 2025 to clear a backlog of requests (AFRINIC-Announce). Allocation resumption is the one point in this sequence where the registry function and the corporate incapacity visibly interacted: address requests had stopped clearing, and an interim arrangement was made to clear them.

AFRINIC publishes its own litigation FAQ and court-cases page as its account of the proceedings in which it is a party (AFRINIC, litigation FAQ). Those pages are the registry's narrative, not a neutral record, and are used here only as such.

One further item is unresolved. A Mauritian newspaper reported that Judge Oh San-Bellepeau withdrew as inspector (Le Mauricien). No court or gazette confirmation of that withdrawal was inspected for this article, and its consequences — including whether the inspectorate lapsed, or continued with another appointment, and what that means for any report due before 30 September 2025 — are not established here. Readers should treat the inspectorate's current status as open.

Which forum reviews a registry decision now

The question posed at the outset was whether the authority AFRINIC acquired through the 2004–2005 chain, and the contractual route that came with it, still governs who may allocate, revoke or transfer African number resources. The evidence supports a two-part answer, and the parts do not point in the same direction.

On the instrument chain itself, nothing located here has replaced it. IANA's registry still records 41/8 as allocated to AFRINIC; the recognition resolutions stand; no IANA or ICANN status change withdrawing recognition appears in the record examined. At the global layer, the 2005 instruments remain the operative source of the allocation relationship.

At the corporate layer, the position is different. The entity that holds the contracts, adopts the policy and appears in the registry records is in receivership, is a declared company under section 230, and has not produced an undisputed board through the election the courts twice ordered. Decisions that require a validly constituted membership decision — board elections, constitutional changes, possibly membership-class determinations — cannot be taken by the ordinary route while that is true.

So the competent forum has partly shifted, and it has shifted to the Supreme Court of Mauritius, not to another registry body. The court is supervising the reconstitution of the holder; it has not, on the documents inspected, taken over the making of registry policy, and no order located here purports to decide who gets which addresses. A receivership is a remedy over a company. A registry is a function performed by a company. The distinction is the whole point, and it is the distinction most easily lost in commentary that describes the courts as having taken over AFRINIC.

For a resource holder, the practical consequence is narrow but real. A dispute with the registry about an allocation decision is still, on the contract layer, a dispute with the company under the company's agreements. What has changed is the company's capacity to give a binding answer, and the availability of the ordinary internal route — members resolving through a board — to correct a bad one.

Contradictions and evidence boundaries

Three tensions run through the record and are recorded rather than smoothed over.

First, the receivership date. AFRINIC's communiqué says 12 September 2023 and the appellate judgment excerpt supports a 12 September 2023 oral judgment; Proclamation No. 10 of 2025 recites "in or about 2024". A reader who takes either document alone will start the clock a year apart.

Second, the appellate disposition. The excerpted wording restoring the 12 September 2023 order while speaking of setting aside the appeal does not sit easily with AFRINIC's characterisation of a dismissal on 15 October 2024. The full judgment was not read for this article; the discrepancy is a reading task, not a substantive contradiction.

Third, resolution dates versus announcement dates in the 2004 records: provisional approval is 30 September 2004 in the resolution and appears as October 2004 in some summaries, because ICANN announced it on 14 October 2004.

Two further boundaries should be stated. The IANA report and the ICANN resolutions were available to this article as provider-reported excerpts of those pages, not as full documents read line by line; the 2024 SCJ 473 judgment and Proclamation No. 10 of 2025 were likewise available as excerpts of the published PDFs. Where this article describes content of those documents it is describing what the published text states at the points excerpted, and the underlying pages remain the place to check a specific clause.

And the two African-registry accounts used here — RIPE NCC's transition page and AFRINIC's history and litigation pages — are the accounts of the institutions involved, not third-party findings.

What would settle it

The conclusion that the 2005-era instruments remain the operative source of registry authority is falsifiable, and here is what would falsify it.

An IANA or ICANN status change — a withdrawal of recognition, a reassignment of the African blocks, a redelegation of whois and RDAP authority — would end the claim at the global layer. No such change appears in the record examined.

A court order assuming direct authority over allocation decisions, rather than supervising governance reconstitution, would end the claim at the corporate layer. No such order appears in the record examined, though the inspector's terms of reference come close on membership class.

Publication of an executed 2004–2005 continuity or escrow instrument would falsify the negative finding in this article. A conducted, uncontested board election producing a mandated board would remove the governance-capacity defect that the current analysis treats as live. And a gazette notice replacing the section 230 inspectorate with a different statutory mechanism would falsify the description of the current control surface.

Each of those is observable. That is the test this article sets itself, and the reader can apply it without further interpretation.

Where a reader wants the registry's own account of the proceedings, the linked directory entry for this subject is RIPE NCC to AFRINIC Transition.