[NCSG-Discuss] Is ICANN helping to subvert its own governance model?

[Emmanuel Vitus]

Dear Prof.

Thank you for sharing Alice’s article and for keeping this important
discussion alive. I would, however, suggest some caution, as several of the
claims being circulated are not supported by the factual record.

I reviewed the meeting proceedings from Prague, the AIS in Accra, and most
recently Dublin, where the CAIGA blueprint was presented. ICANN was never
mentioned as a sponsor or financier. The document, attached here, has been
shared with the community since Prague for review and contribution.
Consultations are still ongoing across Africa to establish an advisory body
that will help coordinate African voices in global Internet governance.

Smart Africa is an alliance of 40 African governments working with the
private sector, Regional Economic Communities, universities, and other
institutions. It is not a government agency or political instrument. it's
not the African Union. It has an NGO status.

For transparency, I recently published an opinion piece
<https://medium.com/@emmanuelvitus/smart-africa-icann-caiga-afrinic-how-the-brouhaha-exposes-the-politics-of-african-digital-cf3ddc42beca>
linking all transcripts and documents from ICANN public meetings to help
anyone verify the facts. It may lack a touch of diplomacy :), but it was
written in good faith. Having followed and written about the AfriNIC crisis
for years, I find it ironic that some of those who once praised Smart
Africa’s intervention now question the same process that helped save the
continent’s only Internet registry.

Warm regards
*Emmanuel Vitus*

Le lun. 10 nov. 2025 à 19:59, Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu> a
écrit :

> I want to make sure that everyone in NCSG has read this substack article
> by Alice Munyua of Kenya. Although it deals with IP address policy not DNS
> policy, the issues it raises apply to the entire ICANN ecosystem.
> The TL;DR is that ICANN has supported an African organization that is
> rooted in national governments and is proposing to set up an overlay
> governance structure for AFRINIC that disempowers the community members and
> gives governments veto power over policy decisions. As Alice writes in her
> post,
>
> The RIR system; AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, RIPE NCC manages the
> internet’s addressing infrastructure globally. These organisations work
> because they are built on community trust and technical independence from
> governmental control. The system works because the same principles apply
> everywhere; bottom up policy development, community self governance,
> insulation from political direction. If those principles do not apply in
> Africa, if intergovernmental organisations can draft bylaws externally,
> coordinate electoral outcomes, and substitute political endorsement for
> member ratification then the precedent affects the global system.
> Here is a link to the post: https://substack.com/home/post/p-177968365
>
> Alice poses some useful questions that ICANN's management needs to answer:
>
> We need
>
>    - Transparency about ICANN’s full involvement in developing CAIGA
>    [including] the scope of participation and financial support.
>    - Explicit assessment of CAIGA’s compatibility with ICP-2 and the RIR
>    governance principles that apply to RIPE NCC, ARIN, APNIC, and LACNIC.
>    - Answer to the direct question: Would ICANN support similar
>    governmental restructuring of RIRs in other regions? If not, justification
>    for why different standards apply to African internet governance.
>    - Commitment that any AFRINIC governance reforms will be developed
>    through AFRINIC’s own community processes, not external drafting with
>    political endorsement mechanisms.
>
>
>
> Dr. Milton L Mueller
>
> Georgia Institute of Technology
>
> School of Public Policy
>
> <https://internetgovernance.org>
>
>
>
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