CAIGA risks reshaping African digital cooperation — but not in the way advocates claim

• CAIGA may centralise authority in ways that weaken, rather than strengthen, regional autonomy.
• ICANN’s expanding influence raises concerns about external interference at a moment when African stakeholders are demanding a reset.

What happened: A new framework emerging amid a governance vacuum

The introduction of the Continental Africa Internet Governance Architecture (CAIGA) has been framed by supporters as the next phase in cross-border digital cooperation. In theory, CAIGA would streamline policy development and harmonise internet governance practices across African states. But the timing could not be more contentious: the region is already grappling with the collapse of AFRINIC, a failed registry whose years-long governance crisis has left Africa’s IP-resource management in disarray.

Rather than offering clarity, CAIGA has become entangled in the political fallout. Civil-society groups and technical operators fear that CAIGA could entrench the very problems it claims to solve, creating a new layer of bureaucracy at a moment when Africa needs a lean, accountable replacement for AFRINIC — not another institution vulnerable to opacity and political manipulation.

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Why it’s important

Draft proposals for CAIGA offer little detail on how decisions will be made, who retains authority, or what checks and balances would prevent elite capture. The architecture risks mimicking AFRINIC’s governance failures — including unworkable election standards and a lack of transparent oversight — at continental scale.

Without robust safeguards, CAIGA could reproduce the conditions that allowed AFRINIC’s leadership to discard valid votes, annul democratic elections, and erode trust. Rebuilding confidence requires structural reset, not structural expansion.

Even more concerning is the perception that CAIGA could open the door to greater external leverage. ICANN, which has been widely criticised for over-extending its reach and undermining court-approved processes in the AFRINIC crisis, is positioning itself as a guiding force for Africa’s new governance direction. Its adoption of the ICP-2 compliance framework — pushed through without full multistakeholder process — grants ICANN unprecedented power to derecognise regional registries.

Embedding CAIGA into this environment risks weakening Africa’s bottom-up governance principles. At a time when stakeholders are calling for a reset to restore autonomy, CAIGA could facilitate the opposite: a quiet consolidation of external influence.

Collaboration can be strengthened — but not through opacity

Africa’s digital future depends on cooperation, but cooperation must be rooted in trust. CAIGA, as currently framed, offers neither transparency nor accountability. For many operators, the priority remains clear: stabilise IP-resource management, replace AFRINIC with a functional and trustworthy RIR, and prevent ICANN or any external actor from picking Africa’s leaders under the guise of reform.

Until these fundamentals are secured, CAIGA risks becoming yet another governance experiment that centralises power while failing the continent’s internet community.