This archive report was first published on 12 November 2019.
On November 12, 2019, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) lost a court case against the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) related to data privacy.
The case centered around the IEBC's refusal to share the complete data set of Kibra voters with ODM, citing concerns over voter privacy. However, the court ruled in favor of ODM, stating that the IEBC had a duty to provide the un-redacted data set.
Just days later, President Uhuru Kenyatta assented to the Data Protection Act, a bill that had been pending in Parliament for over a decade. The Act aims to protect citizens' personal data from being shared without their consent.
According to experts, the value of personal data increases exponentially with the scale of the data collection process. While sharing personal data may seem harmless, it can confer significant power and advantage to those collecting and consolidating the data.
With the Data Protection Act now in place, data controllers such as the IEBC, mobile money vendors, and security guards will be required to obtain explicit consent from individuals before sharing their personal details with third parties.
As Mr. John Walubengo, a lecturer at Multimedia University of Kenya, notes, 'the dynamic and value of the matter become significantly different' when considering the collective impact of careless data sharing.
As Kenya enters this new era of data protection, citizens are advised to be mindful of the value of their personal data and to demand transparency and accountability from data collectors.
