Summary

  • AFRINIC’s Registration Service Agreement, the contract every Resource Member signs, makes the member acknowledge that its number resources “are not property (real, personal or intellectual)”. When the agreement ends, AFRINIC “will immediately revoke the number resources” and stop its services “without incurring any liability whatsoever”.
  • The same contract caps liability at six months of fees “or 100 USD”, lets AFRINIC rewrite the terms on 30 days’ notice and makes the member indemnify AFRINIC. The member has no other registry to sign with.
  • Cloud Innovation’s page “Own your IP” gives the opposite answer: the addresses a network runs on belong to that network, and the registry keeps the book. In 2021 it took three court orders to stop these clauses being used against it.

The paper behind a much-searched question

“Who owns an IP address?” is asked by engineers, by buyers of networks and by the banks that lend to them. The practical answer sits in a contract, and in Africa one party writes that contract. AFRINIC’s Registration Service Agreement, in its own description, “governs the provision of Internet number resource registration services by AFRINIC to its Resource Members”. A network in AFRINIC’s region cannot take its business to a second registry. It signs this form or it has no addresses.

So the form deserves to be read slowly. Three clauses do most of the work.

Clause 6: sign here to agree that you own nothing

Under clause 6 the applicant acknowledges that it is “bestowed with an exclusive right of use” of its number resources “within the ambit of the ‘need’ which it has justified in its application and for no other purpose”. It then acknowledges that the number resources “are not property (real, personal or intellectual)”, and that transferring them “is strictly prohibited” outside a merger or acquisition or a transfer under AFRINIC’s adopted policies.

That sentence is no statute and no judgment. AFRINIC wrote it into AFRINIC’s own form, and every customer has to sign beneath it. Cloud Innovation’s description is exact: “That is the keeper of the book writing its own name on every deed.”

Clause 11: revoked “immediately”, liability “whatsoever”

The termination clause gives AFRINIC the right to end the agreement after written notice. The member has 30 days to show cause. The process stops only where AFRINIC “considers in its own discretion” that the member’s answer is satisfactory. The party that wants to terminate is the judge of whether termination is deserved.

Then comes the effect. If the agreement is terminated or expires, “AFRINIC will immediately revoke the number resources and otherwise cease providing the services without incurring any liability whatsoever.” Membership rights “shall lapse immediately”. A missed invoice is enough to start: under clause 5, if a member does not pay a fee “for any reason”, AFRINIC may revoke the resources or terminate the agreement.

A network is more than its registration. It is routers, staff, contracts and customers who expect their connection to work tomorrow morning. The clause treats all of that as a line in a database that the keeper may delete.

Clause 10: a network for 100 USD

The limitation of liability says AFRINIC provides its services on a “best effort” basis and bears “an obligation of means only”. It is not liable for “any damage of whatever nature and magnitude caused to The Applicant or any third party”, unless it is conclusively established that it did not use appropriate means. And then the number: “AFRINIC’s and The Applicant’s liability will be the greater of the amount paid by The Applicant to AFRINIC during the six months immediately preceding the event giving rise to such liability or 100 USD.”

The cap is drafted for both sides, but the two sides do not hold the same power. One of them can strike the other out of the record the whole internet relies on. As Cloud Innovation puts it: “Power that costs a hundred dollars to misuse will be misused.”

The rest of the contract leans the same way. Clause 9 has the member indemnify AFRINIC against third-party claims; nothing runs in the other direction. Fees are “non-refundable”. And the preamble reserves AFRINIC’s right to amend the agreement when its Board so mandates, with effect 30 days after posting. A member that expressly refuses the new terms is told what follows: delivery of services “will be stopped forthwith”.

It has been tried

None of this is a thought experiment. In 2021 AFRINIC’s management, and then its Board, moved to end Cloud Innovation’s membership, which would have taken back the addresses its customers’ networks run on. Cloud Innovation says those customers are operators in 60 countries. The Judge in Chambers of the Supreme Court of Mauritius stopped AFRINIC three times that year. The order of 13 July 2021 restrained AFRINIC from freezing or reclaiming the addresses; the order of 3 December 2021 restrained it from terminating the membership until the dispute is finally determined. The orders are in Cloud Innovation’s public record.

“What stood between those networks and the clause was a court,” the company writes. A contract that needs three injunctions in one year to stop it from destroying a customer is a contract with the power on the wrong side.

What owning means

Cloud Innovation’s position is that the network which puts its capital, engineers, contracts and customers on an address, and carries the loss if it is taken away, is its owner. A land registry records every title deed and holds none of them. “The deed is the network’s, and the registry keeps the book.”

The company spells ownership out as four things: lawfully held addresses are securely yours; you may go on using them; you may transfer them; and you may take them to another registry. Lu Heng’s Bill of Rights of Uniqueness Coordination draws the same line from the registry’s side. A registry exists to keep number resources unique: “It may record. It may coordinate. It may protect uniqueness. It may not rule.” His Note 78, published on 13 November, says it in two sentences: “The deed is the network’s. The registry records it.”

AFRINIC’s own website describes its mission as “To serve the African Internet community”. Its contract describes something else, and its newest policy completes the picture. Since 4 February 2026, in the words of AFRINIC’s summary, “AFRINIC-issued IPv4 cannot be transferred out of the region”; the staff assessment explains that AFRINIC “will not lose its current resource members to other RIRs”. The same assessment notes that a revision of the Registration Service Agreement “may be required” to implement the policy. The form can still get worse.

Three questions for your registry

Cloud Innovation’s page ends with three questions any network can put to its registry without a lawyer:

  1. Can you take away the addresses my network runs on?
  2. If you take them wrongly, what do you owe me?
  3. If I leave, do my addresses come with me?

“At AFRINIC the answers are: yes, at once; a hundred dollars; and no.” That is the contract behind the slogan. Cloud Innovation’s page “IP for Africa. Not Africa for AFRINIC.” sets out what the slogan should have meant instead. The answer to the question in the headline is three words long: own your IP.

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