Why Developing Countries Are Underrepresented at ICANN and IGF

More than half the world’s internet users live in developing countries. Yet the bodies that write the rules of the internet barely hear their voices — and the consequences ripple across every aspect of digital life for billions of people

Over 60% of the world’s internet users live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Yet when the rooms fill up at ICANN meetings and IGF forums — the bodies that shape internet policy for everyone — those regions often account for fewer than 20% of participants. The internet’s rules are being written largely without the people who use it most. That is not a minor administrative oversight. It is a structural crisis of legitimacy.

Let’s talk about why developing countries are underrepresented at ICANN and IGF, why it produces harms that ripple across the entire digital world — and what genuine reform would actually look like.

What’s Actually Being Decided in These Rooms

To understand why underrepresentation matters, you first need to understand what is at stake. This isn’t procedural bureaucracy. The decisions made inside ICANN and IGF shape who gets online, on what terms, in what language, and at what cost.

ICANN decides which domain extensions exist and who controls them. It governs how IP addresses are allocated across the world. It sets the policies that determine whether websites can exist in Arabic, Hindi, or Swahili — or only in scripts designed for Western keyboards. It shapes the security standards that protect billions of users from cyberattacks they will never know were prevented.

The IGF, meanwhile, shapes the norms. It builds international consensus on content moderation, privacy rights, AI governance, cybersecurity principles, and digital inclusion. The vocabulary and framing that emerge from IGF sessions filter into national legislation, international treaties, and the policies of the world’s largest tech platforms.

When the Global South is systematically absent from these spaces, the outcomes naturally skew toward the priorities, business models, and political preferences of wealthier, more powerful participants. The consequences are not theoretical. They are already visible, already measurable, already being felt.

The Scale of the Gap, in Numbers

The underrepresentation of developing countries at ICANN and IGF is not a perception problem. It is documented, measurable, and persistent. A few figures frame the crisis more starkly than any paragraph could.

60% of all global internet users live in the Global South — Africa, developing Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East

~20%is roughly what those same regions contribute to meaningful participation at ICANN meetings and IGF forums

$4,000+is the estimated cost — flights, hotels, registration, visas — to attend a single ICANN meeting in a major global city

54African nations represent over a billion internet users — yet have historically held fewer than 3% of ICANN Board seats

North America and Europe represent roughly a quarter of global internet users. They account for more than half of ICANN participation. Africa represents around 12% of users and barely 4% of the governance conversation. Those aren’t statistical curiosities. They are the governance gap made visible.

Seven Barriers Keeping Developing Countries Out

The underrepresentation of developing countries at ICANN and IGF is not accidental. It is produced by specific, identifiable barriers that compound each other relentlessly. Here they are, named plainly.

1. The Financial Chasm

ICANN holds three in-person meetings per year, typically in major global cities. Registration fees, international flights, hotels, and incidentals can exceed $4,000 per person per meeting. For a policy expert in Bangladesh, Kenya, or Bolivia — this is simply impossible without external funding that is rarely available and never guaranteed.

2. The Language Wall

English dominates proceedings at ICANN and IGF to an overwhelming degree. Translation services exist, but working documents, consultation drafts, and technical debates often remain English-only — creating deep structural disadvantages for participants who must operate in their second or third language, under time pressure, in a room full of native speakers.

3. Technical Complexity as a Gatekeeping Tool

Participating meaningfully in ICANN processes requires deep technical knowledge — DNS architecture, IP addressing, cryptographic standards, protocol design. Building that expertise requires access to training, educational infrastructure, and mentorship that remains far more available in wealthy countries. Without it, delegates from developing nations can attend but cannot meaningfully influence outcomes.

4. Visa and Travel Uncertainty

Participants from many developing countries face lengthy, expensive, and deeply uncertain visa processes to attend meetings in Europe, North America, or East Asia. Visa denials — sometimes arriving days before the event — are a chronic, documented barrier. You cannot contribute to a meeting you are refused entry to attend.

5. Institutional Capacity Gaps

Many developing countries lack national internet governance bodies, think tanks, or civil society organisations with the mandate and sustained resources to engage with ICANN and IGF processes consistently. One person attending one meeting changes nothing. Sustained institutional engagement — built over years — is what shifts policy. That requires infrastructure most of the Global South simply does not have.

6. The Insider Knowledge Problem

ICANN and IGF processes have decades of accumulated history, procedural norms, working group relationships, and unwritten rules. Newcomers — especially those arriving without mentorship from experienced participants — find these communities nearly impenetrable. The processes reward those who already know how they work. That reproduces the same faces, the same perspectives, and the same blind spots, year after year.

7. Time Zone and Schedule Disadvantage

Even when virtual participation has become more available, key working group calls, public comment deadlines, and decision-making sessions are frequently scheduled for European and American business hours. Asking a civil society advocate in Lagos or Dhaka to contribute meaningfully at 2am — repeatedly — is not inclusion. It is inclusion theatre.

These barriers do not exist in isolation. They stack. A civil society advocate in Nigeria faces the financial barrier, the English-language disadvantage, the visa uncertainty, the technical knowledge gap, and the time-zone friction simultaneously. The result is not merely inconvenience. It is systematic exclusion dressed in the language of open participation.

The Real-World Consequences for Billions of People

Underrepresentation is not an abstract equity problem. It produces concrete, measurable harms for people who will never set foot in a governance forum and may never have heard of ICANN or IGF.

Progress on Internationalised Domain Names — enabling web addresses in Arabic, Hindi, Swahili, Amharic, and hundreds of other scripts — has been painfully slow, partly because the communities most affected have the least voice in the processes that govern them.

Domain registration pricing structures were designed with Western economic realities in mind. The cost of a domain name remains prohibitive for individuals and small businesses in low-income countries, pricing millions out of digital participation before they even begin.

Privacy frameworks developed in ICANN and IGF spaces frequently reflect European GDPR standards while ignoring the distinct data sovereignty challenges facing countries with weaker institutional protections, different legal traditions, and far more precarious relationships with state surveillance.

IP address allocation policies shape where internet infrastructure investment flows. Underrepresented regions have historically received less favourable allocations — compounding existing infrastructure deficits and slowing connectivity expansion for the next billion users who are overwhelmingly in Africa and South Asia.

And as AI governance increasingly migrates into internet governance spaces, the absence of Global South voices means AI systems, data standards, and regulatory models are being designed without accounting for the majority-world contexts where they will most consequentially be deployed.

The least protected communities are the least heard. And when the people who live with the sharpest edges of internet policy have no power to shape it, those edges stay sharp — by design or by neglect. Both are failures.

Voices from the People This Affects

“I have the expertise. I have the ideas. What I don’t have is a $4,000 travel budget and an American visa that takes eight weeks to arrive — possibly after the meeting has already happened. That’s not participation. That’s performance.”
— Civil society advocate, West Africa, IGF 2024 regional session

“When I attend ICANN meetings, I often feel like I arrived at a party that started twenty years ago without me. The relationships, the shorthand, the unwritten rules — they are all established. My job is to find a way to matter in a room that wasn’t designed for me.”
— Internet governance researcher, South Asia

“We represent over a billion internet users across the continent. And our continent has fewer ICANN Board members than Switzerland. Tell me that isn’t a political problem dressed up as a technical one.”
— African digital policy advocate, speaking at an IGF session on representation

What ICANN and IGF Are Currently Doing — Honestly

Both bodies are aware of the problem. Both have launched initiatives to address it. An honest assessment recognises what is working while naming what isn’t.

ICANN’s Fellowship Programme funds approximately 30 to 40 participants per meeting from underrepresented regions, covering travel and accommodation. It is valuable. It has made a real difference for the individuals who access it. But it covers a tiny fraction of those who should be in the room.

The NextGen@ICANN initiative targets young internet governance leaders from underrepresented regions with training and meeting attendance funding. A genuinely strong pipeline programme — limited in scope.

ICANN’s regional engagement offices in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East improve local outreach. The IGF has helped establish over 100 national and regional IGF processes globally, giving local stakeholders a domestic platform before the global forum. Both are meaningful. Neither resolves the structural barriers that make global participation so costly and exclusive.

The honest verdict: these programmes are palliative, not structural. They work around the barriers rather than dismantling them. As long as the fundamental architecture of ICANN and IGF participation is designed for wealthy, English-speaking, institutionally-backed participants, fellowship programmes will always be treating symptoms rather than the disease.

What Genuine Reform Actually Looks Like!

Incremental fellowship programmes and goodwill statements are not enough. Meaningful inclusion of developing countries at ICANN and IGF requires structural change. Here is what that looks like in practice.

01. Binding representation mandates, not aspirational targets

ICANN’s Board and supporting organisations need hard minimum requirements for regional diversity, proportional to user populations. Africa, developing Asia-Pacific, and Latin America must have guaranteed seats — not depend on whether the right people happen to apply or win elections in any given cycle.

02. Radical multilingualism across all working documents

All public consultations, working drafts, and key decisions should be available in at least the six UN official languages simultaneously — not as after-the-fact translations of decisions already made. Substantive multilingualism, not symbolic gesture.

03. Massively expanded fellowship funding, built into the revenue model

Scale the ICANN Fellowship Programme tenfold — from dozens of sponsored participants to hundreds — funded through a mandatory contribution from domain registration revenues rather than discretionary goodwill from year to year.

04. Rotating meetings to Africa and South Asia

At least one major ICANN meeting per year should be hosted on the African continent or in South Asia — bringing the institution to its underrepresented communities rather than always requiring those communities to travel to it.

05. Fully functional asynchronous participation pathways

All key decision-making processes need robust asynchronous participation options — allowing substantive contributions from participants who cannot attend in person or join live calls scheduled for someone else’s time zone.

06. Institutional ecosystem investment, not individual ticket-holders

Partner with universities, civil society networks, and government ministries across the Global South to build sustained, institutional internet governance capacity — not individual fellowship recipients who return home to an ecosystem with no support, no follow-through, and no continuity.

07. Visa guarantee mechanisms as a condition of meeting hosting

ICANN should formally require host country visa facilitation guarantees before confirming any meeting location — ensuring no participant is denied access to a meeting they have the funding and the right to attend.

08. Structured mentorship for every new participant from an underrepresented region

Pair new participants with experienced governance practitioners who can help them navigate the insider knowledge and relationship capital that currently only accrues to those who can afford repeated, sustained attendance over many years.

Why the Entire Internet Depends on Getting This Right

This is not a niche equity debate. The consequences of continued underrepresentation at ICANN and IGF extend far beyond the communities most directly affected.

The next billion internet users will come almost entirely from Africa and South Asia. If those communities don’t shape the governance framework now, the infrastructure will be built for them — not by them. That asymmetry is not just unfair. It is architecturally unstable.

Digital sovereignty arguments from states like Russia and China gain traction precisely when developing countries feel that the “open internet” governance model doesn’t actually represent them. An ICANN and IGF that exclude the Global South make the authoritarian alternative — a government-controlled, fragmented internet governed through the UN’s ITU — more attractive, not less.

Internet fragmentation accelerates when developing countries feel shut out of global processes and seek parallel frameworks. The multistakeholder model’s legitimacy depends entirely on it being genuinely multistakeholder. When it isn’t, the argument for it collapses — not just in rhetoric but in reality.

The legitimacy of the entire open internet depends on whether its governance actually includes the people it claims to serve. An ICANN and IGF that systematically exclude developing countries aren’t governing the internet for everyone. They are governing it for some — at the expense of the rest. That is not a sustainable foundation for a resource used by five billion people.

Quick Recap: Everything You Need to Know

Developing countries represent over 60% of global internet users but fewer than 20% of meaningful ICANN and IGF participation
Seven structural barriers maintain this gap: financial cost, language, technical complexity, visas, institutional capacity, insider knowledge, and time-zone disadvantage
The consequences are concrete — slow multilingual internet progress, lopsided domain economics, AI frameworks blind to majority-world realities, and infrastructure investment gaps
Current inclusion programmes from ICANN and IGF are valuable but insufficient — they treat symptoms rather than structural causes
Real reform requires binding representation mandates, radical multilingualism, massively expanded funding, and institutional ecosystem investment
The legitimacy of the open internet governance model depends on whether it can genuinely include the people it claims to serve
Getting this wrong doesn’t just harm developing countries — it fractures the global internet for everyone

The Internet Belongs to Everyone. Its Governance Should Too.

Understanding the representation crisis at ICANN and IGF is the first step. The next is demanding — loudly, specifically, and persistently — that these institutions become what they claim to be: truly global, genuinely inclusive, and accountable to the billions they serve.

Share this — the people who need to read it most are least likely to be in the room.