Its a network protocol. TCP/IP is centralisation by your definition.
SAFE will only be centralisation in terms of a technology. Not of storage, or governance or authority or pathways or control or coin supply
- Storage - as decentralised as anything we’ve seen to date.
- governance - each section does the governance with loose association with other sections and there should be 100’s of thousands sections when the network is large enough for you to call centralised. But this is decentralisation since the people themselves run the nodes in each section. And the nodes of a section are not local but dispersed across the globe.
- authority - similar to governance but also there is no one controlling it like any other centralised system. The reason is that it is decentralised.
- pathways - it will use any and all internet pathways that can be routed through. Any centralisation here is by the companies that supply and run those pathways and not SAFE
- control - the network has no ability to disallow anyone, no ability to censor, or limit or whatever associated with control. It merely retrieves the account info when you supply the keys for that info. Its a slave not a controller.
- coin supply - you obey the laws of the design and you earn/spend coins. The network is a slave that handles this process, it cannot favour one over another.
Also I feel that using your definition then anything decentralised can be called central. Like air is a centralised feature of the earth in that many creatures rely on it, yet the air is the most decentralised thing we have. OR the oceans as @riddim mentioned