AFRICAN Network Information Centre (AFRINIC), the region’s Internet registry has distributed over 111 million IPv4 addresses, 10 000/32s of IPv6 addresses and 2 281 Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) in Africa, since its establishment in 2005.
Marking its 18th year, AFRINIC with base in Mauritius, is a not-for-profit organisation responsible for the distribution and management of Internet numbers like IPv4, IPv6 addresses and ASNs for Africa and the Indian Ocean.
AFRINIC, in a statement, said its journey began in the mid-1990s when organisations providing Internet services and other network operators in Africa were required to get Internet number resources from other regional registries.
The challenges, it stated, led to discussions about forming a dedicated regional Internet registry for the continent.
AFRINIC was established after being accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to become the fifth regional Internet registry.
Accordingly, Mauritius was chosen as the regional headquarters, Egypt as the technical base, Ghana as domicile for capacity building and South Africa was selected to host the data centre.
“The government of Mauritius, through the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications, welcomed AFRINIC in Mauritius and provided the first office at Cyber Tower, Ebene, on a rent-free basis.
“Other African governments were instrumental in the setting-up process. The government of South Africa, in particular, took charge of all expenses during the first year of operations, while hosting the first two AFRINIC staff,” the statement noted.
One of the founders, Dr. Nii Quaynor, added: “It took the elders a decade to build consensus for forming AFRINIC. We must have a strong AFRINIC community before the end of the next decade.”
MEANWHILE, recall that the pace of migration from IPv4 to IPv6, especially from Africa, still ranked lowest compared to other continents.
Specifically, while some of the countries like India (70 per cent), Belgium (66 per cent), the US (53 per cent) and France (55 per cent) have high IPv6 adoption rate, lots of countries, especially those in Africa, including Nigeria have very limited IPv6 deployment.
According to Africa IPv6 Development White Paper, prepared by Africa Telecommunications Union (ATU) and Chinese technology firm, Huawei, which was released late 2022, it observed that the countries with developed ICT industries tend to have higher IPv6 adoption rates.
With reference to Africa, the White Paper observed that in 2021, 40 per cent of the population has Internet access, and 60 per cent of them access the Internet via mobile phones. Accordingly, it noted that while the network coverage grows rapidly in those regions, there is still great potential compared to other parts of the world, stressing that this will also bring significant social and economic values.
Referencing the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which estimated that improving Internet access to reach 75 per cent of the population could create a further 44 million jobs, the document said the rapid growth of the Internet requires not only access technologies like 4G/5G, fiber, among others but also IP as the basic protocol.
The document said as the IPv4 address pool is already exhausted and the standards around the version gradually stop evolving, IPv6 has become the only choice for sustainable development of the Internet. However, it said not every country is aware of the trend.
The White Paper noted that the deployment in the majority of the countries is still low, and the regional development is well below the world average (13.92 per cent in western Asia and 1.36 per cent in Africa).
Specifically, Gabon (22.60 per cent); Togo (16.26 per cent); Congo (12.63 per cent); Rwanda (8.90 per cent); Zimbabwe (8.87 per cent) while rest of Africa is 1.36 per cent adoption rate on the average.
