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Latest intelligence on infrastructure operators, policy decisions, market moves, and digital power shifts.
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The seven seats that framed AFRINIC’s fee question
Resolution 201701.324 did not decide what AFRINIC’s members should pay. It decided who would be allowed to organise that question first. By approving a Fees Review Committee and naming seven members, the Board created a compact channel through which assumptions about services…
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The consent that changed IANA’s numbering operator but kept ICANN on the hook
AFRINIC Resolution 201609.300 was a small corporate act with a large design lesson: when a critical registry service moves to an affiliate, continuity depends less on institutional prestige than on whether consent, performance, liability, records, remedies and replacement remain…
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A stronger complaint gate cannot carry the whole weight of due process
Draft 3 made an evidence-free complaint less able to trigger an AFRINIC resource review, but left the far more consequential stages after entry substantially where Draft 2 had put them. That asymmetry matters because procedural legitimacy is not secured at the threshold alone: it…
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The Eightfold Cut That Still Had No Mandate: Soft Landing BIS Draft 3 at AFRINIC-25
On 22 July 2016, Soft Landing BIS Draft 3 reduced its proposed Phase 1 ceiling from a `/15` to a `/18`, cutting the maximum request from 131,072 IPv4 addresses to 16,384. The proposal kept the rest of its scarcity machinery substantially in place and went to AFRINIC-25 on 29…
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The Unwritten Rule at AFRINIC’s Review Gate
In August 2016, the second draft of an AFRINIC resource-review proposal altered a single verb in the clause governing community complaints. That small edit matters because a private technical registry does not need to reach a final finding before a review begins to impose costs.…
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An Invitation to Every Meeting: What Resolution 201608.298 Changed at AFRINIC
On 10 August 2016, AFRINIC’s Board moved from noting legal advice on one agenda item to creating a standing invitation for its Legal Adviser at every Board meeting. That modest-looking change could bring legal discipline closer to decisions, but it also raised a lasting…
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From One Sentence to One Morning: What AFRINIC Resolution 201608.297 Actually Made Possible
An August resolution offered one short bridge from a postponed Governance Committee election to a special members’ meeting; by 30 November, that bridge had become a morning of twenty bylaw propositions, a tea break and a tightly timed election for a non-binding advisory body. The…
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AFRINIC’s 2016 Strategy Vote and the Two-Year Publication Gap
On 8 July 2016, AFRINIC’s Board unanimously authorised publication of a strategy for 2016–2020. Yet the organisation later said that only an extract appeared that September because the full plan was considered internal; approval to publish the complete document came in May 2018…
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Inside the Unseen Table: What AFRINIC Delegated in July 2016—and What It Did Not
On 8 July 2016, AFRINIC’s Board unanimously approved an internal delegation-of-authority document intended to distinguish decisions for the Board, the chief executive and other roles. The table itself is not in the public record. That absence matters because delegation is the…
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Four committees, twelve seats, and the mandate record AFRINIC members could not see in one place
On 8 July 2016, AFRINIC’s Board considered a committee composition table already discussed informally at its retreat, reconstituted four temporary bodies with twelve seats between them, and adopted the resolution with one proxy-represented director abstaining. The act looks like…
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Three Smaller Rooms: AFRINIC’s 2016 Standing-Committee Control Map
Two committee chairs crossed the boundary between finance and audit, but they did not cross on equal terms. That small asymmetry in AFRINIC’s July 2016 committee roster reveals what the resolution really was: a private-company arrangement for moving information, framing…
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From Ballot to Ledger: What AFRINIC Resolution 201607.287 Actually Did
Five days after new Board terms began, AFRINIC recorded a precise piece of corporate housekeeping: remove Aminata Amadou Garba and add Seun Ojedeji on the List of Directors and Members at the Registrar of Companies of Mauritius, effective 1 July 2016. Resolution 201607.287…
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The Signature After the Vote: What AFRINIC’s 2015 Accounts Approval Really Carried
On 6 June 2016, AFRINIC’s Board approved financial statements that the record described as already prepared and audited, while the auditor’s signature was still expected to follow. That sequence can support accountability—but only if every handoff, omission and unresolved control…
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The auditor’s return: what AFRINIC’s 2016 reappointment record can — and cannot — show
AFRINIC’s decision to retain PwC for the 2016 financial year looks simple only from a distance. Read closely, the public record describes a sequence of distinct acts: committee review, Board recommendation and member approval. That sequence created a route for accountability, but…
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When an audit becomes a claim to power: AFRINIC’s first resource-review draft
On 18 May 2016, four authors published a proposal for AFRINIC to audit the number-resource records of its members. The administrative premise was serious: a registry cannot keep a dependable ledger if it cannot test stale, contradictory or false information. But…
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The Boundary in the Room: What AFRINIC’s 2016 Conduct Code Could—and Could Not—Do
AFRINIC’s Board adopted Resolution 201605.283 to govern behaviour in meetings and mailing lists, where a well-aimed intervention can protect participation but an overextended one can redistribute institutional power. The enduring significance of the code lies in that boundary. A…
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Seven Days, a Different Instrument: How Soft Landing BIS Draft 2 Turned a Patch into a Replacement
The most consequential change between the first two Soft Landing BIS drafts was not a newly tightened address threshold. It was a change in form: within seven days, a selective amendment became a self-contained replacement, altering how readers would identify, interpret and audit…
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The Final Pool Was a Ledger, Not a Realm
Soft Landing BIS Draft 1 offered a concrete bargain for the dwindling IPv4 pool: cut the largest Phase 1 award, move to the next phase at a declared pool threshold, and preserve separate routes for shared infrastructure, first-time applicants and needs not yet foreseen. The…
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The committee that did not yet exist: AFRINIC’s five-to-six-month accountability gap
AFRINIC’s Resolution 201602.270 altered a calendar, not a constitution. Yet by moving the first Governance Committee election and appointment from the May/June 2016 meeting window to November/December, the Board also postponed the arrival of a new place for structured advice…
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The USD 10,000 Decision: Tracing AFRINIC’s IETF Endowment Commitment
On 26 June 2015, AFRINIC’s Board turned an online resolution into a narrow corporate commitment: USD 10,000, once only, for the IETF Endowment. The amount was modest and the recipient’s work was closely connected to the technical standards on which address coordination depends.…