The Data Protection Act came into effect in Kenya in November 2019. This ushered the country into a new data privacy dispensation that aimed at ensuring Kenyans were empowered with enforceable privacy rights over their personal information, while providing clear guidelines for private and public institutions to handle their users’ data with care. The Kenyan Data Protection Act (DPA) applies to data controllers and processors and provides data subjects with certain rights and safeguards.
The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) is hence the designated government agency that is key to ensuring appropriate handling of personal data in Kenya as enshrined in the Data Protection Act (DPA) of 2019.