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

[Mueller, Milton L]

Emmanuel, thanks for your response.

I have done some fact checking and also can find no evidence that ICANN funded CAIGA. I have asked ICANN's VPs to confirm this but as noted in my earlier message they have not replied. As far as I can tell that is the only inaccuracy in Alice's post.

Even if there is no funding, there is of course the November 2024 MoU, which seems to authorize special efforts to empower governments in Section 3.3 https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/mou-smart-africa-icann-12nov24-en.pdf

It is a bit disingenuous to say that Smart Africa is not an intergovernmental entity when its board entirely consists of heads of state.  https://smartafrica.org/the-board-2/ Anyone who has been around internet governance circles as long as I have sees many instances of governments professing (perhaps sincerely) to be "multistakeholder" when in fact they are just states seeking consultation from other stakeholders but not really sharing power.



Dr. Milton L Mueller

Georgia Institute of Technology

School of Public Policy

[cid:202eb384-5710-41f5-9ddb-e2e8a21b380b]



________________________________
From: Emmanuel Vitus <emmanuelvitus at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2025 10:08 PM
To: Mueller, Milton L <milton at gatech.edu>
Cc: NCSG-DISCUSS at listserv.syr.edu <NCSG-DISCUSS at listserv.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: Is ICANN helping to subvert its own governance model?


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<mailto: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

[cid:ii_19a70dadd23d86c2a991]<https://internetgovernance.org>


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