AfriNIC

A court-ordered registration lasted ten days. The erasure is not an isolated lapse—it is the latest chapter in AfriNIC's running governance crisis.

• AfriNIC delayed for eleven months before adding Cloud Innovation to its statutory register, then removed it ten days later without proper reasoning provided
• The deletion has already drawn a fresh court challenge from CIL, demanding the record be corrected
• This is not AfriNIC's first governance failure under receivership—nor the first time court orders have gone unheeded

Fifteen days. That was the timeline set by the court.

Gowtamsingh Dabee, the court-appointed receiver of AfriNIC, provided a written undertaking on 10 June 2025 that Cloud Innovation Ltd would be added to the organisation's statutory register of members. The Supreme Court of Mauritius issued the order the following day, directing AfriNIC to correct its register under the Companies Act and record CIL as a member. The company registrar was given fourteen days to complete the formalities.

The entry finally appeared on 13 May 2026—nearly eleven months late. By 22 May, it had vanished.

The sequence, confirmed by certificates from the Mauritian Companies Registry, is not just an administrative lapse. It is the latest symptom of an organisation whose governance, even under court-supervised receivership, shows no sign of improvement. AfriNIC has been in receivership since September 2023. Its management of IP address and autonomous system number allocations for the entire African region is meant to proceed under judicial oversight. Instead, the handling of CIL's membership reads as something closer to defiance.

Cloud Innovation Ltd is not a peripheral actor. It holds substantial IP resources through AfriNIC and has been locked in litigation with the registry for years. The June 2025 court order was meant to settle one thread of this entanglement by formally recognising CIL's membership status. Dabee's commitment appeared straightforward. The delay was not the result of any appeal or conditional order blocking implementation. It was administrative non-compliance—bordering on contempt.

Then came the erasure.

On 9 May, before the registration finally appeared, AfriNIC issued a communiqué suggesting that the court order concerned its resource register rather than the statutory register of members under the Companies Act. The organisation said it was considering legal action to clarify the order's precise scope. But rather than wait for a court to rule, AfriNIC moved ahead. Without a formal court order, CIL was removed from the members register. No explanation was given. No justification was published.

Legal representatives have already responded with a fresh court filing, demanding that the removal be corrected and the record be restored. They argue the deletion had neither legal nor contractual foundation. Who ordered the removal, and on what authority, remains unanswered.

This is not AfriNIC's first governance crisis. It is not the first time a court order has been delayed, diluted, or ignored. The pattern is accumulating: an election process challenged on nine separate grounds; a board that passed controversial policies while its own legitimacy was being contested in court; a receiver whose role is to enforce discipline over an organisation, yet whose own compliance with judicial direction is now in question. Each episode alone might be dismissed as procedural friction. Together, they form a picture of an organisation that operates as though court orders are optional guidance rather than binding instruction.

There is a broader question here. AfriNIC exists in receivership because the Mauritian courts found its management wanting. The receiver's mandate is to stabilise operations and restore compliance. Yet when a statutory register can be altered eleven months late and reversed ten days later without a court order, the oversight mechanism itself appears to have failed. If court orders can be ignored in the ordinary course of business—if a receiver and board can act without formal judicial authorisation and offer no explanation when challenged—then the institution is operating without meaningful accountability. Disregard for law and order is not an accident at AfriNIC. It is the pattern.

The gap between promise and admission was eleven months. The gap between admission and erasure was ten days. Neither interval suggests an organisation ready to be trusted with Africa's internet address book.