Good day potential clients😉,

Introduction

For today’s lesson, we’ll be discussing what Kenya had done in regard to Data Protection and Data Privacy.

Current State

First, we have really come far as a country in terms of defining and setting policies that are feared towards safeguarding personal data. For today, we’ll look at the first step that we took in this direction. Did you know that the first Act known as Kenya Information and Communication Act was introduced in 1998 but came into effect in 1999. The main aim for the Act was to provide a standard by which data processors and data controllers were required to follow. This act was to guide communication service providers.

Fast forward to 2010, there were several regulations which came about from the Kenya Information and Communications Act. Some of the regulations are Kenya Information and Communications Regulations which was for Consumer regulation and the Kenya Information and Communications Act (Registration of SIM Cards) in 2015.

In the health sector, we have the Public Health Act 2012, the Healt Act, 2017 and the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Act, 2006.

In the financial sector, we have the National Payment System Act, 2011 which birthed the National Payment System Regulations in 2014. The aim of this Act was to regulate processing of financial data.

I’m sure this has shed light to how far we’ve come in terms of the several Acts that were put into place to regulate how data was to be handled. Well, you can ponder on that and dig deeper into each of the Acts and the impact before we dive into the Data Protection Act.