The regional Internet registry (RIR) AfriNIC has seen steady growth since its formal inception in April 2005, says CEO Adiel Akplogan.
Akplogan was speaking at the fourth AfriNIC public policy meeting held last week in Nairobi, Kenya, to discuss policy proposals for Internet resource management in Africa.
The non-profit RIR, which manages all Internet Protocol (IP) resources in Africa and the Indian Ocean regions, provides services to more than 200 operators from 50 countries in the region.
According to Akplogan, assigned IP addresses have increased by more than 100% throughout Africa in the last year, with similar growth forecast for 2006.
The conference was coupled with an Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) training workshop, with members from 30 different African countries, to help train Internet service providers` operators to understand and implement the new system, explained Akplogan.
IPv6 is the new standard protocol for the Internet and increases the amount of potential address assignments. This new address space is extremely large and sparsely populated, which makes it possible to encode more routing information into the addresses, he said.
"This scope leaves the Internet wide open for further development and growth in Africa."
Open debate
There is constant "open debate" at these conferences as to what is best for the growth of Africa`s Internet, commented Akplogan.
"One of our main goals this year is to strengthen AfriNIC`s structure to be able to tackle the challenges that face us in a professional manner and improve our communication toward our members and the community at large."
Akplogan said the pricing of IP addresses had been a contentious issue with some clients since AfriNIC had become an independent operating RIR.
He explained that when AfriNIC took over IP addressing across Africa, the organisation had to combine two areas that were operated by different regions, operating at different fees.
SA was previously serviced by ARIN (a North American RIR) and the majority of African countries were previously serviced by RIPE (a European RIR), noted Akplogan.
"We had to adjust pricing of both regions so we could operate as a self-sustaining organisation by the end of 2006, so we don`t have to rely on foreign government subsidies."
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