The campaign to subvert Africa's internet registry
18 comments
·April 21, 2025TimorousBestie
A horrid state of affairs. African countries have a right to develop their own Internet infrastructure without foreign meddling.
Symbiote
Why does Africa only have 5% IPv6 adoption? With more, newer networks I expected it to be higher.
toast0
Afrinic still has quite a lot of IPv4 addresses available. Networks in other places generally haven't really pushed IPv6 until IPv4 addresses get hard to find.
betaby
Simple answer - Huawei. I know that may sounds controversial, but Huawei employees allocated to manage African networks have zero knowledge of IPv6. One would think they are trained in China and should know IPv6, but in practice that's not the case.
hnuser123456
I worked for a registry for a while, and we'd have people who didn't really understand how any of this works making huge offers for huge chunks of IPv4. It happened more than once that I explained that IPv6 also exists, also can identify your computers on the internet, and is essentially free and unlimited, but you'll need your engineers to learn it.
GuinansEyebrows
IP profiteers deserve the same hell as domain squatters and bad* landlords
* s/bad//g if you're feeling spicy
immibis
This sort of thing is happening to a huge number of organizations all around the world in all fields of expertise. Once power games replace the concept of competence, the collapse of a civilization is inevitable - and that has already happened.
wizzwizz4
It is often possible to simply ignore the power games. No need to depose them if they're rulers of nothing.
derelicta
Honestly, this warrants some complaint to the CPC.
immibis
The Communist Party of China? Why would they punish someone for bringing more wealth to China?
bilbo0s
Because the resources and wealth are not going to China. He's reselling them to SE Asia and North America with the vast majority being routed from the US or Hong Kong. Especially right now, I'd imagine the CPC would be very interested in knowing about any Chinese citizens conspiring illegally to enrich companies in the US.
That fact alone pretty much guarantees this guy gets F'ed over if the CPC starts to hear too much about what he's up to.
Now I think about it, that's probably the reason he's so desperate to suppress any media coverage of the entire scam. He knows if the dictators back in China get wind of it, the gig is up.
Probably also some less than savory people out of Hong Kong that would be anxious to, um, "cut out any loose ends" so to speak. Anyone, like the guy in this article for instance, that might inform their government as to the identity of his co-conspirators.
onefreecomputer
[flagged]
mschuster91
Hot take, but that's why I'm fed up with "anti-colonial" activists who act like it's time to just drop our responsibilities on the former colonies and now "third world" countries.
It has been shown many times before, with this shitshow being the latest example, that most "third world" countries simply do not have a legal system in place that can cope with rich Western or new-rich Asian exploiteers. In turn, that means that yes, Western countries need to step in on all levels until these countries have robust enough systems to stand up for their interests (and not those of rich "businessmen" and scammers) on their own!
mmooss
> drop our responsibilities on the former colonies
The West wasn't responsible, but rapacious. The colonialists are the "rich Western or new-rich Asian exploiteers", and always have been. That's who the anti-colonialists have pushed back against.
> now "third world" countries
Nobody in that field has used that word in a long time. Africa - an enormous place that can't be described in one way, has many countries doing very well.
> Western countries need to step in
That should be up to the people in those countries, not you or me or some powerful Westerner. Usually it doesn't work out well for their interests - the colonial powers use the countries for their interests.
mschuster91
> Africa - an enormous place that can't be described in one way, has many countries doing very well.
And a shitload of countries in the hold of some warlord or other despot, or like Libya or Sudan on the verge of collapse. Something needs to be done about these countries and their resources - they deserve to be utilized in a way benefitting all citizens, not just the junta in power.
> That should be up to the people in those countries, not you or me or some powerful Westerner.
That assumes a democratic structure and the ability of the people in those countries to have a voice in said democracy. Both are far from given. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't come on its own, particularly not if the elites are the ones holding all the guns, so there needs to be a system in place to support actual democracy and getting rid of kleptocrats, autocrats and similar powers.
saagarjha
Anti-colonial people will typically ask for reparations to solve exactly this problem. Coming in, ruining a country, and then bailing is exactly what they take issue with.
mschuster91
> Coming in, ruining a country, and then bailing is exactly what they take issue with.
I proposed doing exactly the counter: coming in and staying until the situation is tenable.
> Anti-colonial people will typically ask for reparations to solve exactly this problem.
Money isn't everything. When the judiciary is compromised and/or incompetent, no amount of money can prevent a situation like the one described here.
The main link is 404ed now. Any other sources?