Multinational Organisations (MNCs)

AFRINIC has observed an increase in membership and IP resource requests coming from established global operators with a local presence in but headquartered outside the AFRINIC service region. As per the actual practice, due diligence is conducted by the AFRINIC Hostmasters to ensure compliance with the IPv4 allocation policy stipulations and establish justified needs. These operators need to adapt to what AFRINIC, as RIR, requires from them as supporting information(and this practice may differ from their experience with other RIRs).

AFRINIC Hostmasters have observed that a document to guide these organisations in their resource requests will ensure that complete requests are submitted by global operators, thereby minimising potential delays in the evaluation process and ensuring on-time deployment of the planned services in the AFRINIC service region.

Way Forward

Steps

Resource Membership Application Process

Step 1
Average time: 30 minutes to fill and submit the form

(1) Application

After you have reviewed the eligibility criteria for AFRINIC Membership and IP resources and you believe that you or your organisation may qualify for AFRINIC Resource Membership, you can submit your application on the New Membership Registration Portal(NMRP). You will first have to register an account on NMRP before you can submit your application.

When you have submitted your application, you will receive an automated email with a ticket number - all correspondences shall be conducted and recorded in the ticket. If you believe you have additional documentation which shall ease your adherence as a member, you may reply to the email which you received and attach the documents, keeping the same subject line.

Click here to initiate this step

Step 1
Average time: 30 minutes to fill and submit the form

Step 2
Average time: 2 working days*

(2) Compliance checks

A member of the Customer Services team will carry out the preliminary administrative checks to determine your eligibility for AFRINIC membership. Your organisation’s registration papers(e.g Founding or Incorporation document), as well as phone numbers and email addresses provided, would be verified.

At this stage, you will also be asked to check the Registration Service Agreement (RSA) and ensure that it is filled in and signed.

Note: It is highly recommended to have more than one contact person to represent your organisation in all matters related to AFRINIC

Step 3
Average time: 4 working days*

(3) Evaluation

The request for AFRINIC Resource membership will then be handled by the Registration services team. The request will be evaluated against applicable policies and a hostmaster will contact you regarding the approval or if additional information is required.

Step 3
Average time: 4 working days*

Step 4
Average time: Invoice is due immediately after being issued.

(4) Invoicing & Payment

If your request is approved, you will receive an invoice for all the applicable fees. The invoice has a validity period of 45 days and payment can be made by electronic transfer or credit card.

If the payment is not made during the validity period, the approval of the request is deemed void and you will have to submit a new application to restart the application process.

Refer to the fees section for more details.

Step 5
Average time: 2 working days

(5) Compliance Check

At this stage, we shall verify whether a signed & validated RSA as well as the payment has reached us and are on record.

Refer to the fees section for more details.

Step 5
Average time: 2 working days

Step 6
Average time: 2 working days

(6) Registration

After the payment is received and signed RSA is on record, AFRINIC shall issue the approved IP resources and activate your MyAFRINIC portal account.

The registration information will be accessible on the AFRINIC WHOIS database.

New Membership Request

The checklist below will help the global operators in submitting a complete request with information that will enable a quick and successful evaluation. It has been adapted to fit the business of these global operators and also gleaned from experience at handling their resource requests. It is also consistent with and conforms to the current operational practices regarding resource requests evaluation. Upon going through the document, should the operator still require clarifications from AFRINIC, we recommend that they do so before submitting their resource request and contact the Hostmasters on hostmaster@afrinic.net .

The missing information has to lead to a marked difference in the way Afrinic validates the legal establishment and IP needs justification for these global/multinational operators as compared to how the needs justification is observed with the in-region operators,

In an effort to ensure that potential members that identify in this category are able to understand well in advance, what will be required of them in order to conclude the membership and IP resource request with consistency and conformance to all relevant guiding documents, below is a list of the issues that have been identified as the root causes and a checklist of what they should make available in order to expedite the process.

Checklist	Implications and Outcomes
The request should be made in the name of the African based operation. Provide Certificate of Incorporation document for the African based operation.	AFRINIC shall match the name of the requesting organisation with the incorporation documents. Should they differ, the organisation will be informed and requested to address. Unavailability of mandatory administrative documents at the time of request evaluation. (in-region operations’ Certificate of incorporation) will introduce delays.
If the operations are subject to obtaining an operator's license in the country where services are being deployed, a copy of the license shall also be made available.	This is a required document for operators categorised as 'ISPs' and Mobile Operators as the license from the regulator is the starting point of their related operations ". This is not a mandatory document if the services are unlicensed.
Detailed IP addressing plan for resources to be used within the AFRINIC service region clearing demonstrating the services involved and limited to 8 months projected requirements. Inadequate details in IP addressing plans; failure to provide a detailed IP addressing plan undermines the justification on the IP address space is requested.	AFRINIC Hostmasters will check the IP addressing plan - more details will give an indication of the scope of the deployment and also help to finalise the prefix size.
Evidence of equipment in the name of the regional entity (Invoices/purchase orders, Shipping documents to all the POPs(that shall go live within the next 3-5 months) mentioned in the IP addressing plan and Customs clearing documents).	Since AFRINIC allocates IP resources to be used to originate services from its service region, evidence of in-region infrastructure from which the services will originate shall be determined from such documentation. It is the applicant's responsibility to ensure that the documentation is availed to AFRINIC (considering their purchasing rules and third parties involved)
Evidence of International bandwidth capacity (Signed Copies of agreement with undersea cable consortia or transit providers).	Outcome: Public IP resources are meant to be advertised to enable connectivity to the Internet. Lack of this documentation shall entail delays in the evaluation process.
Other requirements At least one technical contact from the AFRINIC region. If already operational in the region, provide IPv4 address ranges currently in use in the region and indicates clearly if the resources being requested shall be used for renumbering. The applicant shall also provide the renumbering time frame. Please indicate any action items to be undertaken from AFRINIC’s side as early as possible. ( In regards to registration of suppliers/Supplier onboarding process etc). Where the names of the organisation on the supporting documentation being provided differ, the applicants must provide all the affiliation documents to AFRINIC. The applicant shall download a copy of the Registration Services Agreement from the AFRINIC website and get their legal team to validate, to remove any delays after resource approval. The applicant shall endeavour to have in region point of contacts to eliminate effects of time zone differences on a speed of correspondence and ability to have phone conversations to discuss any issues encountered during evaluation.

Additional IP Resources Request

Afrinic as of the date of publication of this document; is in the first phase of IPv4 Soft landing, as defined in the Softlanding policy that is outlined under section 5.4 of the consolidated policy manual. The policy, in brief, stipulates that organisations, either new registrants or already existing members have to demonstrate their IPv4 needs for the next 8 months and the already existing members who require additional IP resources must meet certain conditions in the policy and some business rules.

Global operators who are existing resources members of AFRINIC do have some varying scenarios as compared to other in region operators domiciled in only one country, as these scenarios present different conditions that warrant further application of some business rules in order to validate the request entirely.

In an effort to ensure that existing members that identifies in this category and need additional IP resources, are able to understand the requirements well in advance, in order to conclude the IP resource request with consistency and conformance to all relevant policies and guiding documents, below is a checklist of the requirements, implications if the requirements are missing and some recurring issues that have been identified as causes of delays/extended period during the evaluation process.

Checklist	Implications and Outcomes
The member must have used concurrently, at least 90% of all of their previous IPv4 allocations or assignments. AFRINIC Hostmaster's shall conduct a usage validation exercise to ensure compliance with the policy in a consistent manner. This is done by requesting for IP utilisation details in screenshots, read-only access to IPAM web portals and where necessary, a remote session using software collaboration tools.	90% usage is a policy condition and is applicable as is; only when this condition is met then evaluation of other conditions shall proceed. Failure to demonstrate concurrent 90% usage will result in the request being closed and the member shall have to make the request when they have reached this threshold.
The member should be in good financial standing with AFRINIC; if there are any outstanding payments that are not in line with the AFRINIC billing timelines, then the request shall not be evaluated until such time that any outstanding balance is cleared.	The member that is not in good financial standing is given a period of time to remedy the situation. If this time period elapses, the request is closed and the member should send a new request they have remedied the situation and are considered to be in the good standing order.
Detailed IP addressing plan for resources to be used within the AFRINIC service region clearing demonstrating the services involved and limited to 8 months projected requirements. Inadequate details in IP addressing plans; failure to provide a detailed IP addressing plan undermines the justification on the IP address space is requested.	AFRINIC Hostmasters will check the IP addressing plan - more details will give an indication of the scope of the deployment and also help to finalise the prefix size.
Evidence of equipment in the name of the regional entity if the IP plan demonstrates IP needs for setting up new points of presence in a different Geographical and Economic regions with AFRINIC's operating region or where the new IP needs are a significant jump from the current allocation or assignments. (Invoices/purchase orders, Shipping documents to all the POPs(that shall go live within the next 3-5 months) mentioned in the IP addressing plan and Customs clearing documents).	Since AFRINIC allocates IP resources to be used to originate services from its service region, evidence of in-region infrastructure from which the services will originate shall be determined from such documentation.
IP usage must comply with section 5.4.6.2 if the CPM where it strictly indicates that resources are for AFRINIC service region and any use outside the region should be solely in support of connectivity back to the AFRINIC region.	Violation of the policy shall result in the request being closed and applicable sanctions for the violation will be affected accordingly.

Last Modified on - 18 October 2020