Africa's exploitation doesn't end with natural resources. It exists in a rare and largely unknown technological asset as well — IP addresses.
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Every device connected to the internet has an address, and that address allows it to be located and to receive the correct data — much like a letter sent to a physical address.
In the early days of the internet, the IPv4 protocol came into use, allowing for nearly 4.3 billion unique addresses — a number that sounded infinite at the time.
The internet has grown steadily since then, and the number of devices now connected to it, across private homes and the cloud, crossed the 4.3 billion mark long ago.
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To solve the shortage, the IPv6 protocol was developed, offering a far larger number of addresses and operating in an entirely different way — a topic for another time.
The use of a technique called NAT also reduced IPv4 consumption to a single public address per local network, rather than one per individual device.
And yet, IPv4 addresses remain a scarce commodity, with every one of them in use.
If you run a virtual server in the cloud, you can rent one of these addresses for around $1 a month.
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IP addresses are managed by an umbrella organization called IANA.
It distributes addresses to five regional sub-organizations around the world known as RIRs.
Each regional registry manages allocation to the various internet and cloud providers within its geographic area, which in turn assign addresses to end users.
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A few years ago, a Chinese entrepreneur named Lu Heng identified Africa as the only region in the world where unallocated addresses still remained.
He established companies in the Seychelles and approached AFRINIC — the organization responsible for addresses in Africa — demanding an allocation of IPv4 addresses on the grounds that he needed them.
He received an allocation of more than 6 million addresses this way, and in total he now holds approximately 10 million different addresses.
He leases these addresses to any global company willing to pay enough — in some cases including servers engaged in illegal activity — and so Africa has effectively lost a significant portion of the addresses it needs.
Attempts to sue the entrepreneur came to nothing.
He launched a counter-legal campaign that even led to the freezing of the organization's assets and its paralysis, arguing forcefully that despite the addresses having been allocated to Africa, there is no legal barrier to using them in other regions.
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The transition to IPv6 may solve the problem in the future, but paradoxically — that transition requires newer, more advanced equipment that is far less common in Africa.
The continent that needs IPv4 addresses more than any other is the one that has lost ownership of millions of them.
The legal battle is not yet over, but the economic interests of the large corporations that need these addresses will likely defeat resource-poor Africa, and the injustice will remain intact.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss — follow me for more content on science and technology.
In the image: AFRINIC headquarters, the organization responsible for address distribution in Africa.