Alan Barrett Appointed as AFRINIC CEO

AFRINIC’s Board of Directors announced the appointment of Mr Alan Barrett as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Mr Barrett replaces AFRINIC’s founding CEO, Adiel A. Akplogan, and will assume the role on 20 April 2015 for an initial three-year term.

Mr Barrett has been an integral part of the development of AFRINIC and Africa’s Internet since 1989, is a long-standing member of the AFRINIC community, and is a familiar and well-respected face on the global Internet scene.

Mr Barrett has been involved with the Internet since 1989, when he was a lecturer in the Electronic Engineering department at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. Throughout 1990 and 1991, he played a key part in the transformation of the South African universities network to the TCP/IP protocols and in its connection to the global Internet. He operated the primary name server for .ZA at that time and, in 1993, was a co-founder of South Africa’s first commercial Internet service provider.

In 1997, he was one of the four authors of the proposal to form AFRINIC, and served on the AFRINIC Board from its inception until 2009. He has been a member of the ASO Address Council since 2005. He is currently a member of the Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal (CRISP) Team, which drafted the number resource community’s response to the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group’s (ICG) request for proposals. He is also a member of the ICG, which is preparing a proposal for the transition of the IANA functions away from oversight by the US government’s NTIA. He was also one of the founding members of the South African chapter of the Internet Society, and one of the founding members of Namespace ZA, an organisation that was intended to oversee the .ZA ccTLD before that role was taken over by legislation.

Last modified on 27/10/2015