Policy & Regulation

The Historical Mandate of the RIR System

The history of the Regional Internet Registry system shows it was designed as a community-governed framework, not a passive ledger, with legitimacy rooted in delegated authority, open policy development, and multistakeholder coordination from its inception.

Why Africa’s Cybersecurity Problem Has Nothing to Do with Hackers

Africa's cybersecurity failures stem less from sophisticated hackers than from insecure system design, weak governance and limited skills, leaving institutions exposed and shifting the challenge from external threats to internal accountability and resilience.

China and the Geopolitics of Africa’s 6.2 Million IPv4 Addresses

AFRINIC's fight over 6.2 million IPv4 addresses exposes how legal pressure, offshore vehicles and scarcity economics can strip Africa of leverage, turning a technical dispute into a test of sovereignty, institutional resilience and Internet governance.

Modernizing the Registry: How LAC-2025-5 Addresses the Reality of IPv4 Scarcity

LACNIC's LAC-2025-5 proposal formalises IPv4 sub-assignments, bringing grey-market leasing into a framework, easing scarcity pressures, improving registry accuracy, and lowering barriers for smaller providers while preserving incentives to adopt IPv6, across Latin America and Caribbean.

The Fractured Web: How Internet Fragmentation Threatens Our Connected World

As governments, firms and engineers reshape networks, the internet is fragmenting into rival systems. Interoperability erodes, raising costs, curbing rights and weakening resilience, with global growth, innovation and cooperation increasingly at risk.

The Kinetic Frontier: Lessons From Geopolitical Violence and the Bunkerization of AI Infrastructure

Kinetic attacks on Gulf data centres expose the cloud's physical fragility, recasting AI infrastructure as strategic targets and accelerating bunkerisation, while outdated data laws leave firms choosing between legal compliance and digital survival.

Mandate Laundering: From RIR Fantasy to Transition Architecture

Private internet registries have inflated narrow technical roles into quasi-sovereign authority, laundering mandate through ritual and rhetoric; a fragile system now faces legal, economic and political reckoning, prompting calls for coordinated transition urgent global reform.

Africa’s AI Governance Crisis Is Not a Regulatory Gap, It Is a Sovereignty Emergency

Africa's looming AI rules expose a deeper problem: foreign-controlled infrastructure, weak enforcement capacity and externally governed data flows are eroding digital sovereignty, leaving states unable to regulate, protect citizens or meet global obligations.

Trusted Notifier Network (TNN) Core Concept 1: Unfair Cost Transfer and Reversal of Commercial Best

A flawed abuse-response system shifts costs from perpetrators to intermediaries, overwhelming enforcement. The Trusted Notifier Network seeks to realign incentives, curb low-quality reporting, and restore efficiency by embedding trust, accountability, and cost redistribution.

Securing Africa’s Digital Future: Why Cybersecurity Must Lead Digital Transformation

Africa's rapid digital expansion, from fintech to e-government, is outpacing its cybersecurity capacity, leaving critical systems exposed and trust at risk unless governments embed security as a core pillar of development across the continent today.

The Internet That Works for Some: Universal Acceptance Failures Across Asia Pacific

Across Asia Pacific, millions are excluded from digital services because systems fail to recognise non Latin scripts, exposing how flawed design assumptions about internet users entrench inequality across the region in welfare, finance and education.

Africa Can’t Skip IPv4 on the Road to IPv6

Africa's push toward IPv6 cannot bypass IPv4 scarcity, as uneven infrastructure, market dynamics, and governance disputes raise costs, entrench inequality, and risk turning transitional address shortages into a lasting brake on digital development across regions.

Moving Beyond Associated Domain Checks: The Urgent Need to Ban Short-Term Domain Leasing

ICANN's new DNS abuse rules mark progress, yet short-term domain leasing enables fleeting, hard-to-detect attacks. A proposed 30-day minimum lease could curb cybercrime by undermining the economics of weaponised parked domains.

Running-Code Betrayal: How the RIR System Turned Consensus Against the Technical Community

A dispute over African IP governance exposes a flaw in the RIR system, where thin policy, weak accountability and institutional self preservation risk overriding running networks and undermining the technical legitimacy that sustained global coordination.

Concerns Over America’s WiFi Router Ban

America's FCC has barred new foreign-made consumer routers on security grounds, tightening supply for ISPs and households while raising costs and risking technological lag unless domestic manufacturing or approvals quickly expand in coming years significantly.