KenyaIndustry Guidelines for Child Online Protection and Safety in Kenya
Guidance, not a law: the Communications Authority of Kenya's reading of Kenya Information and Communications (Consumer Protection) Regulations, 2010, regulation 9 (protection of children). It binds nobody by itself; the law it reads does.
Guidance on an age-appropriate design code rule, addressed to private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What the regulator expects
- Applies to every licensee of the Communications Authority of Kenya and every ICT product or service provider whose offerings children may access (content, e-commerce, application, interactive and social media, and internet services); a child is a person under 18.
- Develop and implement age-verification mechanisms; the guidelines do not prescribe a specific method.
- Develop and publish a child online protection and safety policy.
- Be ready for complaints to the Authority and quarterly compliance reporting, which is how the guidelines are enforced.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Communications Authority of Kenya (CA)
Settledness
The Guidelines are the Communications Authority of Kenya's own instrument, so they are the Authority's guidance on the duty and no separate construing page is recorded.
- As of
- Open questions
- Which age-verification mechanism satisfies paragraph 8.2.5 of the Guidelines, which tells providers to 'Develop, use and implement age-verification mechanisms', when the only further rule on method is paragraph 11.1 for mobile operators, which turns on SIM card registration?
What it reaches
Age threshold
18
Covered services
ICT products and services children may access, including content services, e-commerce, application services, interactive and social media services, and internet services, offered by any licensee of the Communications Authority of Kenya and any product or service provider in the ICT value chain.
Instrument type
guidance published by a regulator
How the hook was established
express
What makes it apply
Place of effect
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Clause 8.2.5 requires age-verification mechanisms and prescribes no method, no record of the checks and no retention period. Clause 13.4 has licensees submit quarterly reports on the complaints they handled and clause 14.2 has them submit their child online protection policy for approval; clause 14.3 has the Authority monitor and publish the level of compliance each quarter. These are a complaints report and a compliance review of the measures, not a record of an age check, so they are not coded as a logging duty or an audit of a record.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
The Communications Authority of Kenya's guidelines ask every licensee and every ICT product or service provider whose offerings children may access, including content, e-commerce, application and social media services, to develop and implement age-verification mechanisms and to publish a child online protection and safety policy.
They are made under regulations 4, 9 and 21 of the Consumer Protection Regulations 2010, which penalize breaches of the regulations rather than of guidelines, so they are the Authority's guidance on regulation 9 rather than a law of their own. The guidelines took effect on execution and publication by the Authority and gave licensees six months to come into compliance; the text states no day for that execution or publication, and no source stating it has been located.
The guidelines do not prescribe a specific age-verification method, define a child as a person under eighteen years, and are enforced through complaints to the Authority and quarterly compliance reporting rather than a stated fine or criminal penalty.
Back to the example · Lint your app
Page updated .