John Levine wrote:
I would be astonished if ICANN had a position. For one thing, they have no provision for dealing with competing IP registries since the issue has never come up
As ICP-2: Criteria for Establishment of New Regional Internet Registries https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/new-rirs-criteria-2012-02-25-en 2) The new RIR must demonstrate that it has the broad support of the LIRs (ISP community) in the proposed region if overwhelming majority, which means there is no competition, of LIRs in AfriNIC region request to abandon AfriNIC and to have an alternate RIR, ICANN should honor the request.
For another, they are extremely allergic to anything that might even possibly involve them in a lawsuit. ICANN was established to protect governance structure (including RIRs, of course) of the Internet free from government (especially USG) interventions. As such, ICANN is expected to work to isolate African RIR operations from existing lawsuit.
Masataka Ohta