A little late to the party, the African continent has received a small but precious portion of a rare commodity: IP address blocks. As a reminder, these numbers serve to identify each device connected to the internet (whether that be a smartphone, tablet, or computer), so that it can access sites and services for the user.
The older ones, which are grouped under the acronym IPv4 (Internet Protocol Version 4), are limited in number and, more importantly were often distributed long ago, so their market value has exploded in recent years.
“As the internet grows, so does the demand for more IPv4 numbers,” say analysts Milton Mueller, Vagisha Srivastava and Brenden Kuerbis of the Internet Governance Project. Operators wishing to obtain these addresses in blocks often acquire them on the secondary market or “transfer market”, where the “price of IPv4 addresses has risen from about $8 per
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