AFRINIC confirmed that it has reason to believe about 4 million IP address were misappropriated. These can be classified into two broad groups:
Around 2.3 million IP addresses from AFRINIC’s “free pool” which appear to have been incorrectly reclassified in the AFRINIC WHOIS database as legacy address space, and misappropriated.
Almost 1.7 million “legacy” IP addresses, which appear to have been misappropriated.
“Free pool” IP address blocks are Internet resources which had not yet been assigned to anyone. Individuals and organisation can apply to AFRINIC for IP address space. If you qualify under AFRINIC’s criteria, it will assign you a block of IP addresses from its free pool.