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AFRINIC · RIR Watchdog

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BTW reporting and context linked to this RIR. For the proposal-by-proposal history, the people involved and their changing positions, start with Policy.

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One firm accounted for 93.9% of AFRINIC's 2023 legal-fee line. The audit does not show the authority trail

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One firm accounted for 93.9% of AFRINIC's 2023 legal-fee line. The audit does not show the authority trail

AFRINIC's newly published 2023 finance summary assigns US$1,064,309 of US$1,133,630 in legal fees to C&A Law and says US$1,260,250 was owed to the firm at year-end, excluding VAT. The accounts now carry an unmodified audit opinion. What members still cannot see is the…

Aug 13, 2026
Synthetic still life of a small locked corporate archive with a narrow disclosure hatch, three keys on blank cards, a sealed request envelope and a separate larger locked technical ledger

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Three Keys, One Narrow Door: What Resolution 202106.616 Actually Authorised

On 9 June 2021, AFRINIC's Board did not authorise publication to the world. It named three people, allowed any one of them to act, and opened a narrow channel through which two classes of corporate information could be provided when a competent authority requested them under…

Aug 13, 2026
An unsigned blank policy folio halted by a clear glass corporate threshold and an open blank legal-review folder before a separate empty approval frame, with a small brass stop-block and a visible return lane

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The Board’s Narrow No: AFRINIC’s July 2021 Corporate-Law Stop

When `Board Prerogatives on the PDP` reached AFRINIC’s Board for ratification, the Board did not seize the policy process, rewrite the proposal or rule on anyone’s rights. It stopped the text at the company’s own approval gate. Resolution 202107.621 is therefore strongest as a…

Aug 13, 2026
Conceptual still life of three empty committee trays reconnected to a changed Board table by one brass transfer bar holding three blank roster cards, with separate election and officer tokens left behind the bar

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The Handoff the Election Could Not Make

On 9 June 2021, AFRINIC's Board did not pretend that a recent election had automatically refreshed the smaller bodies through which some of its internal work was organised. It recorded a need to reconstitute its standing committees and adopted Resolution 202106.615 as a separate…

Aug 13, 2026
Editorial illustration of a ballot record crossing into AFRINIC’s corporate register

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Five Days That Made a Vote Legible: AFRINIC’s Resolution 202106.613

AFRINIC’s June 2021 election did not become an auditable corporate handoff through the count alone. Across five days, a declared choice moved from a members’ meeting into a board resolution that instructed changes to the organisation’s director and member records and to the list…

Aug 13, 2026
Calm empty private corporate room with a blank dark-glass ballot surface, neutral member tokens, a transparent tally case, three brass trustee cylinders and two brass paths: one to five unlabelled studs and a larger Board chair, the other to a smaller committee chair, with three ivory term rings on each path and a blank two-row ledger beside a correction sleeve

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Two offices, three years: what AFRINIC’s 4 June 2021 election result actually authorised

AFRINIC’s 4 June 2021 announcement did something modest but institutionally necessary: it named Mark Elkins for Board Seat 5 and Simon Balthazar for the Governance Committee, giving each a three-year term. Read closely, the result is a useful example of how a private member…

Aug 13, 2026
A brass directory console links one mailbox channel to an open blank ledger, while a sealed case file remains behind glass beside paired sand measures and a slow-start governor.

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The Mailbox and the Case File: Drawing Draft 7’s Contactability Boundary

AFRINIC’s seventh abuse-contact proposal contained both a sensible directory rule and the seeds of a much larger institutional role. Its most important sentence placed the definition and escalation of abuse outside the registry’s remit. Its most consequential ambiguity was that…

Aug 13, 2026
Conceptual secure reserve drawer protected by three sequential controls

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AFRINIC’s Reserve Lock Was Stronger Than Its Release Plan

In May 2021, AFRINIC placed an additional USD 2 million behind a fixed-deposit account and a demanding approval chain: the chief executive, the head of finance, and one of two senior board officers all had to agree before money could leave. That architecture made internal…

Aug 13, 2026
Empty private boardroom with a blank central folio, two blank paper pads and fountain pens, two foreground executive chairs, and a third chair in shadow

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Two Names at the Attestation Gate: What AFRINIC Resolution 202105.610 Made Executable

Eddy M. Kayihura, the Chief Executive Officer, and Subramanian Moonesamy, the Chairman of the Board, were the two people AFRINIC placed at the signature line in May 2021. Resolution 202105.610 approved the company’s financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2020…

Aug 13, 2026
An unmarked ivory notice in an approval tray, with sealed envelopes leading towards an empty circular members’ meeting table

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Before the vote, the notice: Resolution 202105.609 and AFRINIC’s chain of authority

In May 2021, AFRINIC’s Board recorded a one-sentence decision: Resolution 202105.609 approved the notice for the Annual General Members’ Meeting to be held on 4 June 2021. The sentence looks administrative. Read against the bylaws then in force, however, it marks the first…

Aug 13, 2026
Still life of an open private resource ledger beside a precision brass state gate, with an ambiguous grey resource tile on an unfinished track before the gate, a clearly finished dark tile bearing a restrained cryptographic seal beyond it, and fine route lines leading to independent unmarked operator switches, some open and some closed

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The Meaning of “End”: AFRINIC’s Draft 3 and the Discipline of Negative Routing Assertions

One sentence added to an AFRINIC policy proposal in April 2021 drew a vital line: reclaimed number resources should enter the registry’s AS0 coverage only after reclamation ends. That line can protect routing security, but only if “the end” is made into a state that outsiders can…

Aug 13, 2026
Layered transfer-policy drafts beside a versioned cross-registry compatibility matrix

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The version gap inside AFRINIC’s transfer-policy appeal

AFRINIC’s 2020 transfer-policy dispute exposed a deceptively hard problem: when a draft changes while other internet registries are still assessing it, an appeal cannot prove compatibility—or incompatibility—by attaching an old reply to new words. It needs a versioned record that…

Aug 13, 2026
An empty private committee room with an oval walnut table, exactly five visible chairs, three aligned closed unmarked appeal folders, and a closed central table channel; no people or text.

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Three seats were enough on paper: AFRINIC’s disputed quorum repair

A five-seat review body lost two members while three appeals needed somewhere to go. AFRINIC’s Board answered with a temporary permission: the three survivors could carry on. They answered in turn that they would not. That compact reversal exposes a larger institutional…

Aug 13, 2026
Photorealistic boardroom still life with an open blank rulebook in a clear sleeve, separate nomination frames, logistics tray, paper and dark-glass ballot surfaces, three trustee markers, dispute folder, calendar blocks and brass rails leading towards the Board chair

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AFRINIC’s one-sentence election decision and the missing public version receipt

On 20 January 2021, AFRINIC’s Board said in a single sentence that it had reviewed the Election Processes and Guidelines and adopted the new text “as amended”. Beneath that economical corporate act lay a much more elaborate public mechanism for nominations, screening, voting and…

Aug 13, 2026
Two empty co-chair stations joined to a policy table by a narrow removable hinge beside one small and one large hourglass, a blank resolution folder and an open ledger.

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Resolution 202104.602 and AFRINIC’s Twenty-Four-Hour Appointment Bridge

On 9 April 2021, AFRINIC’s Policy Liaison named Vincent Ngundi and Darwin da Costa as the Policy Development Working Group’s consensus choice but left their term lengths unresolved; on 10 April, the Board crossed that remaining gap by assigning Vincent two years and Darwin one…

Aug 13, 2026
Three empty chairs beside an unlit inspection lamp and closed folio, with five blank trays bridging to a separate operations table holding a sealed archive box, open receiving tray, closed ledger, warm lamp and neutral instruments

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AFRINIC ended a technical committee. The missing question is what survived it

Resolution 202101.594 may have been an entirely sensible corporate sunset: an inactive committee had, the Board said, finished its original work and drifted into matters better owned by operations. But ending an organ is not the same as demonstrating that its useful controls…

Aug 13, 2026
Two nearly identical unbranded terms sheets on an institutional table beside a bounded comment tray, restrained correction overlay and separate approval docket, with no readable text, logos or people

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What Changed When AFRINIC Consulted on Its Mailing-List Terms?

AFRINIC’s Board approved mailing-list Terms of Use for implementation on 20 January 2021, AFRINIC opened comments from 2 to 28 February, and the Board unanimously approved a stated revised proposal on 3 March. Yet the surviving public page comparison reveals only a repaired…

Aug 13, 2026
Editorial illustration of AFRINIC’s Resource Member membership switch held in place by an interim court order

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The order that kept AFRINIC’s membership switch from deciding the case

On 29 March 2021, a Judge in Chambers of the Supreme Court of Mauritius restrained AFRINIC from terminating, suspending or revoking Cloud Innovation’s membership as an AFRINIC Resource Member while the application remained pending. The intervention preserved an operating state…

Aug 13, 2026
Premium institutional still life viewed slightly from above, with six identical unlabelled radial paths leading to an empty four-seat committee table; a transparent frosted gate interrupts one path, while blank candidate cards and a wider empty member circle sit beyond.

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The Gate Before the Ballot: AFRINIC’s 2021 Geography Rule

On 20 January 2021, four appointments turned a short bylaw restriction into a practical gate: before AFRINIC members could vote for Board candidates, geography had already helped decide who was allowed to sit on the committee that would shape the choice put before them.

Aug 13, 2026
An empty institutional desk arranged with a sealed board folder placed before an open consultation tray and a final revised folder

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The Decision Before the Invitation: Resolution 202101.595 and the Order of Consent

AFRINIC’s mailing-list rules acquired two approval dates and one public comment window. The awkward fact is that the first approval came before the invitation to comment. That does not make the consultation worthless, but it does change what the consultation can honestly be said…

Aug 13, 2026