AFRINIC names Sylvain Baya sole valid PDWG Co-Chair nominee

AFRINIC Finally Named Its Co-Chair Candidate. The Room Still Has to Decide.

Why it matters

Three days after the scheduled slate date, AFRINIC published one valid nomination. Sylvain Baya is the name on the page; the policy working group’s consensus meeting is still five days away.

Theo March13 November 2026Reading Time 2 minLast update: 13 November 2026

AFRINIC published one valid Co-Chair nomination; the working group’s consensus selection is scheduled for 18 November.

Summary

AFRINIC’s Nomination Committee published the November PDWG Co-Chair slate on 9 November 2026. It reports one valid nomination: Sylvain Baya.
The election page had set 6 November at 14:00 UTC for publishing the candidate list. Selection by working-group consensus remains scheduled for 18 November in Cape Town.

The missing name arrived; the decision has not

AFRINIC had given its community a date for the candidate list: 6 November, 14:00 UTC. Its current Co-Chair election page still carries that timetable. The Nomination Committee’s dated announcement appeared on 9 November with a starkly short slate: one valid nomination, Sylvain Baya. The institution supplied a name three days after the date it had put in its own calendar.

One valid nomination is a precise count, and a limited one. The notice does not state how many nominations arrived in total or why any other submission might have failed. It directs readers to the candidate’s biography and invites community members to participate, in person or remotely, in the 18 November selection at AFRINIC-38 in Cape Town. The notice describes the next step as a selection, not a completed appointment.

That distinction has teeth. AFRINIC’s election guidelines place Co-Chair choice with the Policy Development Working Group at a Public Policy Meeting. They call consensus the established method. The Co-Chair moderates policy discussion, judges rough consensus, records those calls and transmits adopted policies to the Board. The role is procedural and neutral on substance, yet its holder governs how a room’s agreement becomes an official record. A one-name slate narrows the choice on paper; it does not conduct the meeting.

The election page itself now links to the new slate while retaining a lower candidate table labelled “The June 2026 Selection.” That table names Haitham El-Nakhal, selected in June, and belongs to the earlier seat. A reader looking for this month’s candidate has to follow the new link rather than mistake the old table for the November decision.

The live issue is the handoff between two authorities. NomCom decided which nomination was valid and when that name appeared publicly. The working group will decide on 18 November whether it has consensus for the Co-Chair. AFRINIC can publish a single name; it cannot publish consensus five days early. The official record of that meeting will say what the room actually decided.