The AFRINIC Board has appointed the following people to the Nomination Committee (NomCom) for the 2018 year:

• Kaleem Ahmed Usmani (Mauritius)
• Komi Elitcha (Togo)
• Wale Adedokun (Nigeria)
• Haitham El-Nakhal (Board representative, Egypt)

Alan Barrett

CEO, AFRINIC

The most recent ASO Review concluded with 18 recommendations, which the NRO has resolved to accept. The first 17 recommendations are well defined and practical, and can be implemented by actions of the NRO Secretariat, or of the ASO Address Council, with respect to administrative procedures, documentation, or in some cases adjustments to agreements which are expected to be non-controversial.

The 18th recommendation of the Report is that “The NRO should initiate a public consultation, involving the five RIR communities, to determine the future structure of the ASO”. The NRO EC has concluded to accept that recommendation and is hereby launching a consultation on the issues identified in the ASO Review Report.

While each of the RIRs will launch consultation processes within their communities, the NRO has agreed on this joint announcement, and coordinated call for contributions, in order to maintain consistency in scope of regional consultations, both with each other and with the Review Report.

Scope

The Review Report concludes that “The core mission and administrative tasks for which the ASO was set up remain largely unchanged, and there is no pressing need for organi[z]ational reform”, but at the same time it recommends a “call for a community-wide reconsideration of the role and function of the ASO within ICANN”.

More specifically, the following questions related to the ASO MoU have a TTP (percentage of respondents in Top Two Boxes) that requires us to pay attention to the minority views:

• Does the ASO MoU adequately describe the role and function of the ASO within ICANN? 52% answered Yes.
• Does the rationale for the ASO as spelled out in the ASO MoU need to be updated post IANA transition in light of the creation of the ICANN Empowered Community? 50% answered Yes.

Additionally, the report allocates significant attention to the efficiency of the Internet Numbers Community involvement in ICANN activity after the findings in the question “Does the ASO have a continuing purpose in the ICANN Structure?” with 17% respondents not answering “YES”. Suggesting that some of the activities related to the ICANN engagement might be of marginal interest to the Internet Numbers Community and that could be reviewed:

“We did hear of concerns within the Internet Number community regarding the increasing amount of volunteer time that ICANN engagement seems to require, much of which is of marginal direct interest to the Internet Numbers Community. The NRO will need to regularly evaluate these concerns, and act pre-emptively, if necessary, to ensure that the benefits of the ICANN system are not perceived to be outweighed by the “costs” of engagement“.

Issues to Address:

The scope of this consultation includes the structural implications of issues identified by the ASO Review, including but not limited to:

• Any updates and adjustments identified as required for ASO-related documents
• Any procedural clarifications and adjustments identified
• Reported confusion of roles between ASO and NRO, and their components
• Perceived complexity of relationships among NRO, ASO and ICANN
• Relevance and cost to the RIRs of various ICANN engagement activities

Out of the Scope of this consultation are the following aspects:

• Global Policy Development Process (GPDP)
• ASO AC role with GPDP

Specific Questions:

The NRO EC is looking to specific answer to the following questions:

• What adjustments, if any, should be made in order to address the issues described above?
• Should adjustments be limited to NRO MoU, ASO MoU, and/or ICANN Bylaws
• Over what timeframes should these adjustments be developed and implemented
• What strategic aspects should we pay attention to when considering these adjustments?

5 Decmber 2017 - The Address Supporting Organization Address Council's (ASO AC) call for nominations for Seat 9 on the ICANN Board will close at 23:59 UTC on Sunday, 17 December 2017.

Nomination Process
-------------------
Community members are invited to submit nominations by email toThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.by Sunday,17 December 2017 at 23:59 UTC.Nominations must include the following information:- The full name of the person being nominated
- Contact email address for the person being nominated
- Contact telephone number (if available) of the person being nominated
- The full name of the person making the nomination
- Contact email address for the person making the nomination
- Contact telephone number of the person making the nomination

Election Procedures
--------------------
Procedures for election of individuals to the ICANN Board of Directors by the ASO AC can be found at:
https://aso.icann.org/documents/operational-documents/operating-procedures-of-the-address-council-of-the-address-supporting-organization/#A_9._Selection_of_Individuals_to_the_ICANN_Board_of_Directors

Regional Restrictions
----------------------
The ICANN Bylaws state "no two Directors selected by a Supporting Organization shall be citizens from the same country or of countries located in the same Geographic Region.” (see section 7.2:c). The current ASO AC selection for Seat 10, Akinori Maemura, resides in the APNIC region. Therefore, no nominations for Seat 9 will be accepted from candidates residing in the APNIC region.

Eligibility Requirements
------------------------
All nominated candidates must meet the selection criteria and conflict of interest requirements as outlined in Article 7 of the ICANN Bylaws. The selected candidate will undergo an independent due diligence review by an ICANN contractor, and announcement of the candidate will follow once this review has been successfully completed.

Important Dates
-----------------
- Nomination Phase: 2 October 2017 – 17 December 2017
- Comment Phase: 18 December 2017 – 18 March 2018
- Interview Phase: 17 January 2018 – 18 March 2018
- Selection Phase: 19 March 2018 – 18 April 2018
- Due Diligence Review: 19 April 2018 – 17 May 2018
- Announcement: Around 19 May 2018All phases will conclude at 23:59 UTC on the date specified.

Further Information
-------------------For further information and updated announcements on the election process, please see the 2017 ICANN Board Election page at:
https://aso.icann.org/aso-icann/icann-board-elections/2017-elections/If you have any questions about the elections or the election process, please contactThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

On 2 October 2017 a revised RSA was published for public comments. The comment period ended on 30 October 2017.

We have prepared a table summarising the comments and staff responses to the comments, as well as a revised version of the RSA.

We have also identified a risk that, if a requested transfer is denied for some reason, AFRINIC may be sued by either the source or recipient or both. We have prepared a Transfer Agreement which source and recipient will sign to protect AFRINIC from that risk.

Comments on these documents are welcome for one week, until 10 November 2017 here 

Here are the relevant documents:

• Previous call for comments
• Summary of comments and responses
• Revised draft RSA dated 31 October 2017, showing changes from previous version of RSA dated January 2016
• Document showing changes from the draft RSA dated 30 September 2017 to the revised draft dated 31 October 2017
• Draft Transfer Agreement dated 1 November 2017

Alan Barrett

CEO, AFRINIC

Ebene, Mauritius, 10^th August 2017: Lagos will in November host hundreds of key players in the African and global Internet industry sector at the 27^th public policy meeting of the African Network Information Center (AFRINIC). The event dubbed AFRINIC 27 will be a platform for technocrats and business to discuss policies, trends, resources and challenges in growing Internet for sustainable development in Africa and the Indian Ocean Region. It is being hosted by AFRINIC in collaboration with the Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NiRA).

The event, which is held annually, consists of keynote speeches, policy discussions, seminars, workshops, tutorials and other forums for sharing ICT knowledge within the African region. The 2016 edition was held in Mauritius and was attended by over 250 delegates from 48 countries around the world. Registration for the event is on going through the meeting website http://bit.ly/2vdgM3P.  

Whereas Internet penetration in Africa has grown from 11% to 28.6% in just 5 years despite challenges such as cyber security, it is lower when compared to the rest of the world. Measurable parameters such IP address allocations show that the continent is quite behind. In April 2017, AFRINIC entered the depletion phase of fourth version of IP Addresses (IPv4) way behind of the other four continental regional Internet registries who are already distributing the newest version IPv6 in earnest. Please read the event concept note at http://bit.ly/2uylwiv.

Please read the detailed press release  

7 August 2017 - We are pleased to inform you that registration is now open for the AFRINIC-27 Meeting, being held in Lagos Nigeria, from 27 November to 2 December 2017.

You can register online at: https://meeting.afrinic.net/afrinic-27/?option=com_afmeeting&view=login

Updates and News

You can stay informed with updates and the latest news about AFRINIC-27 via our discussion lists, the AFRINIC-27 meeting website (https://meeting.afrinic.net/afrinic-27/) Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/afrinic) and on Twitter (http://twitter.com/afrinic). We are using the hashtags #AFRINIC27, #Lagos, #Nigeria.

Visas

We strongly advise that you start your travel and visa procedures for Nigeria as from now. For more information about travel and visas please see: https://meeting.afrinic.net/afrinic-27/attend/travel-kit

We look forward to seeing you in Nigeria!