[AFIX Members] Reminder : Applications Open for the 2025 Sustainable Peering Infrastructure Funding Program / Appel à Candidatures ouvertes pour le programme de financement d’infrastructures de peering durable 2025

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 20 Mar 2025, at 12:13, Sylvain BAYA via AF-IX wrote:

> Dear African Peering Community,
>
> ...i want to attest that these grant programs
> (ISOC Foundation) are real opportunities, that
> we as AfIX members should use as a mean to
> encourage other IXP operators to join our
> Association as new active members.

you are mistaken.

whilst i do not speak for either organisation, there is no - and should never be a - correlation between the membership of a voluntary association (such as af-ix) and the right of (in this case) an IX to receive funding from an *external* party, like the isoc foundation.  to do so - ie. to require that a recipient IX be an enforced member of a voluntary association, would be simply virtue-signalling, and a gross failure on the part of both af-ix and the isoc foundation.  there are *many* IXPs that are not a part of the IXPA in their region, for reasons that makes sense to them.  this does not make them any less of a credible IX than - imnsho,  organisation that seek said membership, simply for validation.  to think otherwise, is simply disingenuous.

af-ix as a means of sharing information, and helping others is a good thing.
af-ix membership as an enforced means to receive funding (or accreditation) is not a good thing.

i am less active here than i used to be here, because of personal time constraints.  but let me remind you that af-ix was started as a means to communicate between IXP operators with the intent to assist other IXPs in the region that were looking for help, and felt intimidated/didn’t know where/how to ask.  it *QUITE LITERALLY* was meant to be a mailing list where people could ask for help;  and if you go back into af-ix’s history and mailing list archives, you will see a lot of that help asked and offered.

there’s an entirely different - and credible - school of thought that regional IXAs make no sense, as we don’t really need to divide the world (again) into RIR-defined categories to do good, but that’s for a different day!  :-)

—n.