AFRINIC policies are developed through an open policy development process. There is no requirement to participate in the process and anybody can propose and discuss policy matters related to resource management in AFRINIC region of service. To participate you must subscribe to the policy working group mailing list.

Minutes of the last public policy meeting can be found in the minutes of public policy meetings page

Every policy document has a unique reference and status. The status of a proposal evolves according to the diffrerent steps it goes through in the policy development process.

Guide to Status of Policy Documents

• Proposal-Draft - Status given upon Initial submission on to the mailing list.
• Proposal-Consensus-Accepted - There is consensus on this document the last time consensus was evaluated.
• Proposal-No Consensus - There is No consensus AND proposal has been is sent to the list for further discussion.
• Proposal-Consensus-Rejected - There is Consensus to totally reject the proposal.
• Proposal-Withdrawn - The author of the proposal withdraws a policy at any stage.
• Awaiting Approval - The PDWG chairs have sent a proposal to the board for ratification.
• Approved - Proposal has been approved by AFRINIC board, awaiting implementation.
• Implemented - Proposal has been implemented by staff. It is now a full policy.
• Obsolete - The policy is rendered obsolete by another implemented policy proposal.

Format of Reference ID for Policy Documents

Every policy proposal has a unique identifier of the general format  "AFPUB-YYYY-Category-Number" plus "-draft-nn" where

• YYYY=year in long format eg 2011
• Category refers to what category this policy addresses eg v4=IPv4, v6-IPv6, DNS=all DNS related, GEN=general and all other, ASN=AS Numbers
• Number= Serial number within that year starting from 001 for that category of policy documents.
• nn=Integer that starts with 01 and increases by 1 for every new version of the proposal. 
• If/when the proposal becomes implemented, the "draft-nn" shall be dropped from the final version which shall then become the policy.

As an example AFPUB-2011-v4-002 is the second policy within 2011 relating to IPv4 and it if it ends up having 4 versions, it progress thus: AFPUB-2011-v4-002-draft-01 -->AFPUB-2011-v4-002-draft-02 -->AFPUB-2011-v4-002-draft-03 -->AFPUB-2011-v4-002-draft-04 -->AFPUB-2011-v4.

How to

Participate in the Policy Process

• Subscribe to the RPD mailing list and join the discussion. You can find archives of all the previous discussions in the RPD archives (https://lists.AFRINIC.net/pipermail/rpd/)
• Propose policies --- see how in the section below.
• Attend a public policy meeting to discuss proposals in person. See minutes of previous policy discussions here (http://www.AFRINIC.net/ppm_minutes.htm).

Propose a Policy

In order to propose a policy, proceed as follows:

1. If you have not already done so, please read and understand the Policy Development Process.
2. If you are not already a member of the Resource Policies Discussion (rpd) mailing list, please subscribe to the rpd mailing list, it is the primary medium for discussing policy proposals.
3. Send a copy of your policy proposal using the template below to policy-submission[at]AFRINIC.net . The AFRINIC Policy Liaison will give feedback about the content and format of your proposal (if necessary) and then issue you a unique identifier.
4. Once you get a unique identifier, send your policy proposal to the rpd mailing list. It will subsequently be put online on the AFRINIC policy page.