Carla Sanderson is not just a marketing name attached to a data-centre company. AFRINIC's 2025 candidate materials place her as Head of Marketing at Teraco, on the executive leadership team, with responsibility for marketing and community-building around NAPAfrica. Teraco describes itself as a carrier-neutral colocation provider central to African digital infrastructure, while NAPAfrica describes a neutral Internet exchange in Teraco facilities that offers free peering access and serves hundreds of member networks.
That background matters because AFRINIC has been rebuilding governance after years of instability. AFRINIC's board page lists Carla Sofia Fernandes Sanderson as the Southern Africa director for a three-year term, and the election-results notice confirms the September 2025 result. A later board-and-receiver statement says she chairs the Finance Committee, placing her near audited financial statements, governance recovery and institutional repair.
The control surface is mixed. At Teraco and NAPAfrica, the public evidence supports brand, communications, stakeholder engagement and community-building authority. At AFRINIC, it supports board-level governance and finance-committee responsibility. It does not show operational control over address allocation, routing, Teraco facilities or NAPAfrica's technical platform. The useful signal is whether an executive from Africa's interconnection ecosystem can help restore trust at the registry without blurring commercial infrastructure interests and public registry stewardship.
The watchpoints are practical: AFRINIC financial reports, audit completion, bylaw reform, legal-case handling, membership communications, Finance Committee output, and any public change in Sanderson's Teraco, NAPAfrica or AFRINIC roles. Her profile should be judged by visible governance outputs and documented community positions, not by assumed influence from association with a large data-centre platform.