- Heng has condemned the historical concentration of power and lack of transparency at AFRINIC, claiming its governance is dominated by a small group of insiders who create and exploit complex policies for personal gain, undermining democratic processes and marginalizing independent voices and the broader membership.
- Heng has called for decentralized, member-led governance, advocating for a reformed model where IP address holders have stronger ownership rights and play an active, informed role in governance, reducing reliance on centralized authority and increasing transparency and accountability.
Lu Heng, founder and CEO of IP address management and leasing companies Cloud Innovation and LARUS Ltd, has written an open letter calling for more transparency and community engagement in the run-up to the AFRINIC elections.
The elections, set for June 23, 2025, hope to bring to end years of chaos and uncertainty at the registry, which manages the allocation and registration of IP addresses for the African region.
You can read Heng’s full letter below.
Read more: AFRINIC elections set, voters urged to ‘Reclaim Your Power’
Read more: Cloud Innovation welcomes AFRINIC Receiver, urges continued allocation of IP addresses to ensure African business growth
Read more: What is AFRINIC? The role and challenges of the African Regional Internet Registry
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Letter from Lu Heng, founder at Cloud Innovation, CEO at LARUS Ltd
I am writing in my capacity as the founder of Cloud Innovation and CEO of LARUS, and I appreciate the opportunity to share my perspective on the governance issues at AFRINIC (and at Regional Internet Registries in general).
First and foremost, we have observed a troubling pattern in AFRINIC’s governance structure: the policies and procedures have become extraordinarily complex and opaque. This complexity tends to serve a small circle of insiders who have mastered the system. In fact, an entire niche industry of “RIR consultants” has sprung up to help businesses manage IP address allocations and navigate RIR account bureaucracy . These insiders often offer their services to others, effectively profiting from a convoluted policy environment that only they fully understand. The result is a self-serving cycle – they help write and interpret the intricate policies, and then they get paid to guide others through the maze those policies create.
Beyond just managing policies, this small group has also leveraged its position to influence RIR governance and board elections in their favor. Over the years, a sort of self-reinforcing club has formed – the same familiar faces rotating through committees, advisory councils, and board seats, year after year. They coordinate to support each other’s candidacies and proposals, making it very difficult for independent voices to be heard. We saw this vividly in recent AFRINIC events: at one point, AFRINIC’s leadership even attempted to bend the rules to keep power, extending certain board members’ terms beyond what the bylaws allow and blocking certain candidates from running for the board . Tellingly, those sidelined candidates were individuals seen as reform-minded outsiders. Moves like this undermine the democratic process and entrench the insiders’ control.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of AFRINIC members – including internet service providers, telecom operators, and enterprises across Africa – remain largely unaware of, or disengaged from, these governance machinations. In our experience, many resource members don’t even realize they have a vote or a say in how the RIR is run. They are focused on their day-to-day business of connecting customers, not on arcane RIR policy debates or election procedures. This lack of broad engagement has severe consequences: if only the “club” of insiders and their close associates participate in elections and policy meetings, then naturally that small group ends up calling the shots. Even the wider internet governance community has recognized this problem. The Number Resource Organization (which coordinates all RIRs) noted that a free and fair AFRINIC election requires actively engaging and informing the membership, with the aim of reaching every member and reducing the chance of capture by any single interest group . Unfortunately, such engagement is currently the exception rather than the norm. Turnout in RIR elections tends to be abysmally low. For instance, in the Asia-Pacific region’s APNIC 2024 Executive Council election, voter participation dropped sharply – a worrying sign that highlights how few stakeholders are actually involved in these important decisions . The pattern is clear: when only a tiny fraction of members vote, a well-organized minority can dominate the outcome.
All of this points to a deeper structural issue. AFRINIC (and other RIRs) operate under the banner of “community ownership” of IP resources – a philosophy that no one company or person owns IP addresses, but rather that the community collectively stewards them. It’s an idealistic notion rooted in the early internet, aiming for collaborative, bottom-up governance. However, in practice it has led to an overly centralized authority. Under the pretext of representing the community, a central body (the RIR staff and a handful of active insiders) ends up controlling the allocation of addresses and the decisions on who gets to do what. The average member – the actual network operators on the ground – has little influence or visibility into these decisions, which means the “community” model isn’t truly living up to its name. Instead of hundreds of members sharing stewardship, we have a few people effectively making decisions for everyone.
I would argue that this “community ownership” model, as it currently exists, contains a historical and philosophical flaw. We’ve seen analogous situations elsewhere: when a resource is said to be owned by everyone, often a central authority emerges that in reality owns (and controls) it on behalf of everyone. This can devolve into something reminiscent of an authoritarian regime – where a small elite justifies its monopoly on power by claiming to act in the name of the people. The comparison may sound strong, but consider the dynamic: a tiny group at AFRINIC has had the power to decide critical matters (like IP address allocations or who can run in elections) with minimal accountability, all while using the rhetoric of “community” interest. It’s a stark contradiction of the bottom-up, democratic ethos that RIRs profess. No matter how well-intentioned the idea of communal stewardship is, if it concentrates unchecked power in a few hands, it becomes indistinguishable from the centralized control we see in much less democratic institutions.
We believe the solution is to fundamentally decentralize and democratize how IP addresses are managed and governed. The internet has evolved tremendously over the last decades, and it’s time for its governance to evolve as well. Concretely, we support moving toward a system where each member organization (each ISP, telco, or network that holds IP resources) takes a formal, active role in RIR governance. This means empowering stakeholders at the edges, not just those at the center. Every AFRINIC member should exercise their vote directly (and be fully informed to do so), rather than leaving decisions to a handful of insiders or neglecting to vote at all. Organizations should take responsibility for managing their own RIR accounts and participating in policy discussions, instead of outsourcing that duty or ignoring it. With greater participation and transparency, the balance of power would naturally shift. It would no longer be possible for a small clique to quietly dominate, because a truly engaged community would be watching and weighing in on every important decision.
Additionally, we advocate for recognizing the real stake that these organizations have in their IP resources – in other words, giving legitimate address holders a stronger sense of ownership and rights over those resources. Today, if an RIR unilaterally decides to revoke or reallocate an address block, the affected network has little recourse except lengthy appeals or lawsuits (as we ourselves experienced). That imbalance stems from the notion that the RIR “owns” the addresses on behalf of the community. Instead, we should move to a model where the address users are treated as true owners (or at least long-term custodians with explicit rights), and the RIR’s role shifts to that of a facilitator or coordinator rather than a lord of the land. This concept aligns with the broader trend toward decentralization in technology – much like how blockchain technologies demonstrate that we can manage assets in a distributed way without a single central gatekeeper. In fact, as I’ve publicly argued before, we should “decentralise [IP addresses], let people actually own them rather than subject them to a centralised institution where power could potentially be grabbed and abused” . The goal is an internet where power is truly distributed: each participant holds authority over their own resources and no central entity can override the collective will of the stakeholders.
In closing, I want to emphasize that our stance comes from a desire to see a healthier, more transparent internet governance ecosystem, not from any personal agenda to disrupt for its own sake. The situation at AFRINIC over the past few years has been a wake-up call. We’ve seen how a concentration of power and lack of accountability can paralyze an important institution and hurt the broader internet community. My hope is that through constructive reform – more member engagement, structural decentralization, and clear definition of IP rights – we can ensure such a situation never occurs again, in Africa or any region.
In summary, the era of a small clique controlling Africa’s Internet resources under the guise of “community” must end. True decentralization of IP address management – with real ownership by the networks that use those addresses – is the only way to prevent power from concentrating in the hands of a few, and to ensure fair, open governance of the Internet’s resources.
Sincerely,
Lu Heng
Founder, Cloud Innovation
CEO, LARUS Ltd
