Summary

  • AFRINIC describes itself as “a nonprofit, member-based organisation” registered in Mauritius. The Registrar of Companies’ record issued on 28 October 2026 shows no shareholders and nine members: the eight directors, each entered on 12 September 2025, and Cloud Innovation Ltd, entered on 9 October 2026.
  • Cloud Innovation is on that page because a court put it there. On 11 June 2025, on AFRINIC’s own application, the Supreme Court of Mauritius ordered AFRINIC’s register of members rectified to add Cloud Innovation “as its member in the category of Member”.
  • Cloud Innovation’s answer to the question in the headline is that AFRINIC belongs to its members, and that every eligible Resource Member belongs on the register with it: “If thousands of members qualify for registration, put thousands of names on the register.”

A company with no shareholders

The question “who owns AFRINIC?” has a documentary answer, and it starts with what AFRINIC is. Its About page calls it “a nonprofit, member-based organisation registered and operating under the Corporate Legal Frameworks of Mauritius”. The Registrar of Companies’ record agrees on the form: a private company, file C49338, incorporated on 3 February 2004, status “Live”. The table headed “Shareholders” is empty. So is the table for stated capital.

What the record has instead is a table headed “Members (Applicable for Company Limited by Guarantee or Shares and Guarantee)”. Nobody holds a share in AFRINIC. A government does not, its Board does not, and neither does a continent. It has members, and its own Registration Service Agreement says what they are for: AFRINIC is “governed by a Board elected by the members at large”, and holds its stewardship role for the African internet community “as constituted by its members collectively”.

Cloud Innovation states the conclusion on its page “Who controls Africa’s internet?”: “AFRINIC is a company, and a company belongs to its members, not to its Board, its Receiver or any government.”

Nine names

Then comes the list. On the record issued on 28 October 2026 the members’ table has nine lines. Eight are individuals, each with a start date of 12 September 2025. The same eight names appear higher up the page as AFRINIC’s directors, each appointed on that same day. The ninth line reads “CLOUD INNOVATION LTD”, with a start date of 9 October 2026. The record also shows a Receiver appointed by order of the court on 12 February 2025.

That is the whole statutory membership of the registry for a continent, as the Registrar recorded it: the people who sit on the Board, and one network operator that spent four years in court.

AFRINIC serves and bills many more organisations than that. It calls them Resource Members, and they are the ones who sign its contract, pay its fees and run the networks. They are not on the Registrar’s page.

How the ninth name got there

Cloud Innovation petitioned in May 2021 to have AFRINIC’s register of members rectified to include it. The Supreme Court granted an order on that petition on 4 April 2025. Then AFRINIC itself came to court. On its application, the Court made the order of 11 June 2025, which varies the earlier one so that it reads: “Ordering and directing the rectification of the register of members of the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) Ltd to add details of Cloud Innovation Ltd as per the criteria set out at Section 91 of the Companies Act as its member in the category of Member therein”. The Registrar of Companies was directed to make the corresponding entries. And the order records AFRINIC’s own “written undertaking” to rectify its records within 15 days.

Cloud Innovation’s public record sets out what followed. The 15 days passed without rectification. The company executed the judgment in October 2026, a rule of the Supreme Court of 9 October 2026 restated that Cloud Innovation is a Member, and the Registrar’s record now shows it from that date. The court decisions are collected, year by year, on the company’s page “AFRINIC vs Cloud Innovation”.

The same record shows what came next. On 29 October 2026, the day after the Registrar issued the record, AFRINIC’s Receiver sent a legal notice asking the Registrar to remove the entry, with copies to the Prime Minister, the ICT Minister, the Attorney General and the State Law Office. Cloud Innovation points out that the notice cites no court order. Its position is the ordinary one: a party that objects to an order of the Supreme Court applies to the Court. An appeal, a stay or a variation is granted by judges. A letter does none of those things.

Not the Board, not a continent

Eight of the nine names are directors, and Cloud Innovation does not accept that they hold their seats lawfully: it does not recognise the Board that came out of the disputed election of September 2025. Lu Heng’s Note 78, published on 13 November, describes what claims to speak for a continent: “There is only a private company in Mauritius, with eight elected seats on its board, volunteering for the part.”

The proposed constitution would make the nine-line page a matter of design. In Cloud Innovation’s reading, set out in its statement on member rights and on its page about the draft, Articles 6.5 and 6.6 attach statutory registration and Companies Act rights to directors while describing Resource Membership as contractual. The networks would be customers of a company whose members are its directors.

Put the names on the register

Cloud Innovation’s demand goes beyond its own case. Its statement of 1 November 2026 says: “Every Resource Member should be recognised under company law, entered in the register and protected by the applicable shareholder-equivalent rights.” And then the line that answers every objection about numbers: “If thousands of members qualify for registration, put thousands of names on the register. Administrative convenience cannot justify excluding them.”

The company has also corrected its own description. It accepts that its earlier classification as a “Registered Member”, the category AFRINIC’s bylaws use for directors, was wrong, and says that correcting a label “does not cancel our membership of the company”. The order of 11 June 2025 names Cloud Innovation as a member, and the company notes that no order has cancelled it.

So who owns AFRINIC? Its members do. The Registrar’s page has room for more than nine.

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