Law / Sao Tome and Principe

Sao Tome and Principe

9 of 12 named instruments researched to a stage, across three of the ten areas of law we track: 9 in force. As of .

  1. AI law
  2. Privacy law 6
  3. Scraping law 2
  4. Cybersecurity law
  5. Communications law not researched
  6. Content moderation law not researched
  7. Product and AI liability law not researched
  8. Digital accessibility law not researched
  9. Age gating law
  10. Reuse law 1

in forcenot yet in forceblocked by a courtproposedno longer in force

Privacy law6 instruments, 6 in force

Research summary (249 words)

Sao Tome and Principe's comprehensive personal-data statute is Lei n.º 03/2016, adopted by the National Assembly on and promulgated by the President on , which any controller processing personal data of a person in the country, or using means located there, must observe.

Enforcement sits with the National Agency for the Protection of Personal Data (NAPPD, commonly cited as the ANPDP), which authorizes sensitive-data processing, receives the mandatory eight-day pre-processing notification, and rules on cross-border transfers to a country lacking an adequate level of protection.

The Law gives a data holder rights of information, access, opposition and non-subjection to a purely automated decision, and a right to compensation for unlawful processing, but it imposes no duty to notify NAPPD or the affected person of a personal-data security breach, and it treats biometric identifiers as an ordinary category rather than naming them among the special categories in Article 7 or giving them a dedicated statute.

The Law's own commencement clause defers to general law without stating a day, so no specific date is recorded here, though the statute has stood as the country's operative data-protection framework since its 2016 promulgation, with a dedicated organic law on the Agency's structure (Lei n.º 07/2017) following in 2017.

Enforcement combines an administrative fine track, tiered by the violator's legal form and doubled for a breach involving data the Law subjects to prior checking, with a separate criminal track carrying imprisonment or a day-fine, also doubled for sensitive-category data.

Comprehensive regime

Lei n.º 03/2016, Protecção de Dados Pessoais

Lei n.º 03/2016, de 10 de Maio, sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais, arts. 1-6, 9, 15, 17-18, 21-26, 45, 47Lei n.º 03/2016 sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais, reproduced by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities (NADPA-RAPDP)

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://www.nadpa-rapdp.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Law_3_2016_protection_of_personal_data.pdf

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 3 applies the Law to processing personal data by automated means, wholly or partly, and to non-automated processing of data held in or intended for a manual file, reaching a controller established in Sao Tome and Principe, one whose activities are carried out there, one whose processing falls under São Toméan law by public or private international law, or one using means located in the country, in which case it must designate a representative there and notify NAPPD of that designation; it also reaches video surveillance and other capture of sound or image that identifies a person, and it exempts only a private individual's exclusively personal or domestic activity that is not meant for systematic communication or diffusion.

Article 5 requires personal data to be treated lawfully and in good faith, collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes tied to the controller's activity, kept adequate, relevant, not excessive, accurate and updated, and preserved in identifiable form no longer than those purposes need.

Article 6 permits processing only with the holder's unequivocal authorization or on one of the Law's specific grounds: contract performance, a legal obligation, the holder's vital interests, a public-interest mission, or the controller's own legitimate interest weighed against the holder's rights.

Article 9 subjects interconnecting personal data to NAPPD's authorization unless a legal or organic provision already authorizes it, and requires it to serve a legitimate purpose, avoid a discriminatory effect, and carry appropriate security measures.

Article 15 requires appropriate technical and organizational measures against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, unauthorized alteration, disclosure or access, a subcontractor chosen for sufficient guarantees and bound by contract to the controller's instructions and the same measures, and that contract recorded in a document with legally recognized probative value; Article 17 bars a subcontractor or anyone else with access to personal data from processing it beyond the controller's instructions except under a legal obligation, and Article 18 binds anyone who learns personal data in the course of their duties to professional secrecy, including after those duties end.

Article 21 requires the controller or its representative to notify NAPPD in writing at least eight days before starting a wholly or partly automated processing operation, and Article 22 requires NAPPD's prior authorization before processing credit or solvency data, interconnecting personal-data files, or using collected data for a purpose other than the one it was collected for.

Articles 23 and 24 fix what a notification or authorization request, and any NAPPD record of it, must state, including the controller's identity, the processing's purposes, the categories of data and recipients, the retention period, how a holder can access or correct their data, any planned interconnection or transfer abroad, and a description of the security measures applied.

Article 25 registers non-exempt processing with NAPPD for public consultation and requires a controller exempt from notification to give any person who asks, at minimum, its identity, the processing's purposes, and the holder's rights of access and rectification. Article 47 defers the Law's own entry into force to general law without stating a day.

What it requires

Cross border transfer

Lei n.º 03/2016, transfer of personal data abroad

Lei n.º 03/2016, arts. 19-20 (transfer of personal data abroad)Lei n.º 03/2016 sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais, reproduced by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities (NADPA-RAPDP)

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://www.nadpa-rapdp.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Law_3_2016_protection_of_personal_data.pdf

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 19 permits transferring personal data outside Sao Tome and Principe only under this Law and only where the destination legal order ensures an adequate level of protection, assessed against the nature of the data, the purpose and duration of the processing, the countries of origin and destination, and the rules of law, professional rules and security measures in force there, with NAPPD alone deciding whether a legal order meets that standard.

Article 20 lets a transfer to a legal order without adequate protection proceed, on notice to NAPPD, where the holder has unequivocally authorized it or under a listed derogation: contract necessity involving the holder, an important public interest or a judicial right to declare, exercise or defend, the holder's vital interests, or a public register open to consultation; NAPPD may also authorize such a transfer where the controller shows sufficient contractual safeguards for privacy and fundamental rights. Article 47 defers the Law's own entry into force to general law without stating a day.

What it requires

Data subject rights

Lei n.º 03/2016, automated decisions

Lei n.º 03/2016, art. 13 (automated individual decisions)Lei n.º 03/2016 sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais, reproduced by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities (NADPA-RAPDP)

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://www.nadpa-rapdp.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Law_3_2016_protection_of_personal_data.pdf

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 13 gives every person the right not to be subject to a decision that affects their legal situation or affects it in a meaningful way, based solely on automated data processing that assesses aspects of their personality such as their professional capacity, credit, trustworthiness or behavior.

Paragraph 2 allows such a decision where it is taken in connection with entering into or performing a contract, on condition that the person's own request for the contract has been met or appropriate measures safeguard their legitimate interests, in particular their right of representation and expression, or where a law authorizing it establishes measures guaranteeing their legitimate rights and interests. Article 47 defers the Law's own entry into force to general law without stating a day.

What it requires

Lei n.º 03/2016, rights of the data holder

Lei n.º 03/2016, arts. 10-12 (information, access and opposition)Lei n.º 03/2016 sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais, reproduced by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities (NADPA-RAPDP)

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://www.nadpa-rapdp.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Law_3_2016_protection_of_personal_data.pdf

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 10 gives the data holder the right to be told, at collection, the controller's identity, the purposes of the processing, the recipients or categories of recipients, whether a response is obligatory and the consequences of not responding, and the existence and conditions of the rights of access and rectification, and requires that information by the time of registration or before the first communication to a third party where the data were not collected from the holder directly; it excuses the duty where a law provides otherwise, for security or criminal-investigation reasons, or where informing the holder is impossible or disproportionate for statistical, historical or scientific processing, with NAPPD notified in that case.

Article 11 gives the holder free, undue-delay-free access at reasonable intervals to confirmation of whether their data is processed, the purposes, categories and recipients, the data itself in an intelligible form, its origin, the reasoning behind an automated-processing decision about them, and rectification, erasure or blocking of non-compliant data, with third parties who received the data told of any correction; access to health data, including genetic data, runs through a physician of the holder's choosing, and access concerning security or criminal matters runs through the competent authority or NAPPD.

Article 12 gives the holder the right to object, for weighed and legitimate reasons tied to their situation, to continued processing, and an unconditional, free right to stop processing of their data for direct marketing or other commercial solicitation, exercised before the data is first communicated to a third party for that purpose. Article 47 defers the Law's own entry into force to general law without stating a day.

What it requires

Enforcement supervision

Lei n.º 03/2016, enforcement, offenses and the NAPPD

Lei n.º 03/2016, arts. 14, 27-44 (compensation, complaints, administrative offenses, crimes and the NAPPD)Lei n.º 03/2016 sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais, reproduced by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities (NADPA-RAPDP)

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://www.nadpa-rapdp.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Law_3_2016_protection_of_personal_data.pdf

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 14 gives a person who suffered damage from unlawful processing, or from any other act breaching this Law or its regulations, the right to compensation from the controller, who is exonerated only by proving the damaging act is not attributable to it.

Article 27 preserves a data holder's right to complain to NAPPD alongside administrative or judicial recourse for a violation of this Law, and Article 28 makes a court decision on that violation appealable, on an urgent, breach-only basis, to the Court of last instance.

Articles 31 and 32 set administrative fines for a legal, natural or unincorporated-group violator, up to 1,000,000,000 Dobras, doubled for data subject to Article 22 prior checking, for negligently failing to notify NAPPD of processing under Article 21(1) and (5), giving false information, notifying in breach of Article 23, or, after NAPPD gives notice, maintaining access to open data transmission networks for controllers that do not comply with this Law, and a separate, lower fine of 25,000,000 to 90,000,000 Dobras for breaching another listed provision.

Article 34(1) makes negligence always punishable in the administrative offenses of Article 31, and Article 34(2) makes an attempt always punishable in the administrative offenses it refers to in Articles 32 and 33.

Articles 36 to 40 punish, with imprisonment or a day-fine doubled for Article 7 or 8 data, intentionally omitting a required NAPPD notification or authorization, providing false information in one, diverting or misusing personal data, illegally interconnecting personal data, unauthorized access to personal data, damaging or destroying personal data without authorization, defying a NAPPD order to stop, block or destroy processing, and breaching professional secrecy over personal data.

Article 41 makes an attempt always punishable in these crimes. Article 42 lets NAPPD or a court add an accessory penalty, a temporary or permanent ban on processing, publication of the conviction, or NAPPD's public warning or censure, and Article 43 requires a conviction to be advertised in a widely circulated Portuguese-language periodical and by public notice for at least 30 days.

Article 44 has the National Assembly approve NAPPD's own organic law and the status of its members, guaranteeing their independence, and gives NAPPD its own technical and administrative support. Article 47 defers the Law's own entry into force to general law without stating a day.

What it requires

Sensitive categories

Lei n.º 03/2016, sensitive categories and suspect records

Lei n.º 03/2016, arts. 7-8, 16 (sensitive categories, criminal-offense records and special security measures)Lei n.º 03/2016 sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais, reproduced by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities (NADPA-RAPDP)

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://www.nadpa-rapdp.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/Law_3_2016_protection_of_personal_data.pdf

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 7(1) defines a sensitive category as data on philosophical or political belief, membership of a political or trade-union association, religious belief, private life, racial or ethnic origin, health or sex life, including genetic data; biometric identifiers as such are not named among these categories.

Article 7(2) permits processing this data only under a legal or organic provision that expressly authorizes it, NAPPD's authorization for an important public interest indispensable to its own attributions, or the holder's explicit authorization, and Article 7(3) adds narrower grounds: protecting the vital interests of a person unable to consent, processing by a political, philosophical, religious or trade-union body about its own members with their consent, data the holder has manifestly made public, or a judicial defense.

Article 7(4) permits processing health or sex-life data, including genetic data, for preventive medicine, diagnosis, care or health-service management only through a health professional or another person bound by secrecy, notified to NAPPD under Article 21, and secured by appropriate information-security measures.

Article 8 restricts the central record of persons suspected of unlawful activity, a criminal offense or an administrative offense, and of the penalties, security measures, fines or ancillary sanctions imposed on them, to a public service with specific legal competence, and limits processing for police investigation to what a specific danger or offense requires.

Article 16 requires the controllers covered by Articles 7(2) and 8 to take special safety measures: controlling entry to their premises, preventing unauthorized reading, copying, alteration or removal of data carriers, preventing unauthorized disclosure or alteration, controlling system access and data transmission, logging who enters data and when, and keeping health and sex-life data logically separate from other personal data; NAPPD may also require encryption where transmission over the Article 7 network would otherwise put the holders' rights at risk.

Article 47 defers the Law's own entry into force to general law without stating a day.

What it requires

Scraping law2 instruments, 2 in force

Research summary (205 words)

Sao Tome and Principe's copyright statute, Decree-Law No. 02/2017 (Copyright and Related Rights Code), protects a compilation, anthology, or systematic collection only where the choice or arrangement of its contents is itself an intellectual creation, names no database as such, and gives the country no separate sui generis database right; news of the day and reports of events disclosed as simple information are excluded from copyright protection altogether.

The same Code exempts from an author's consent a temporary or transient reproduction that is an integral part of a technological transmission process and has no independent economic significance, together with a set of quotation, teaching, and library exceptions.

No statute or reported case located addresses computer-misuse or unauthorized-access liability for reading a public, unauthenticated page, terms-of-service enforceability, or a scraping-specific unfair-competition or trespass doctrine, and none assigns legal weight to a robots.txt directive or states an AI-training-specific rule; a computer-misuse or cybercrime statute, cited elsewhere as Lei n.º 15/2017 of , exists, but no primary text of it has been located through the sources available, so its provisions are not addressed here.

Sao Tome and Principe's data-protection statute, Lei n.º 03/2016, separately reaches personal data scraped from a public page (see the privacy topic).

Copyright and text and data mining (TDM)

Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017, utilizações livres e reprodução técnica

Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017, arts. 75-76 e 197, de 19 de Abril de 2017, Código do Direito de Autor e dos Direitos ConexosDecreto-Lei n.º 02/2017 de 19 de Abril de 2017, Diário da República n.º 47 de 17 de Abril de 2017

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/pt/st/st007pt.pdf

In force since . Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 75(1) excludes from the reproduction right a temporary act of reproduction that is transient or accessory, is an integral and essential part of a technological process, and whose sole purpose is to enable a network transmission between third parties by an intermediary or a lawful use with no independent economic significance; browsing and temporary storage that enable a transmission system's effective functioning are lawful on the same terms, provided the intermediary does not modify the transmission's content or interfere with a technology's lawful use as recognized by market practice.

Article 75(2) permits, without the author's consent, a regular selection of periodical press articles as a press review. It also permits the fixation or communication of short excerpts from a work when their use in reporting a current event is justified for information purposes. It further permits inserting citations or summaries of another's work in support of one's own views or for criticism, discussion, or teaching.

It also permits reproducing or communicating an already-accessible current-affairs article on an economic, political, or religious topic, unless its reproduction right has been expressly reserved. Article 76 conditions this free use on naming the author and publisher where possible, and on paying equitable remuneration to the author and publisher in the cases the article specifies.

No text-and-data-mining-specific exception, and no AI-training-specific rule, is stated separately from this general free-use framework, and the Code predates that concept. Infringing outside these exceptions is punished under article 197.

What it requires

Database right

Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017, protecção de compilações e exclusão das notícias do dia

Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017, arts. 3 e 7, de 19 de Abril de 2017, Código do Direito de Autor e dos Direitos ConexosDecreto-Lei n.º 02/2017 de 19 de Abril de 2017, Diário da República n.º 47 de 17 de Abril de 2017

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/pt/st/st007pt.pdf

In force since . Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 3(1)(b) protects summaries and compilations of works, whether protected or not, such as collections, encyclopaedias, and anthologies, as original works only where the choice or arrangement of their contents constitutes an intellectual creation, and article 3(1)(c) extends the same standard to systematic or annotated compilations of official texts (conventions, laws, regulations, and administrative or judicial decisions).

The Code names no database as such and creates no separate sui generis right in an unoriginal, purely factual collection of data, so a compilation that is not itself an original creation is not protected against reproduction under this article. Article 7(1)(a) additionally excludes news of the day and reports of various events disclosed merely as simple information from copyright protection altogether, whatever their protected status otherwise.

Infringing a protected compilation is punished under the Code's own penalty provisions (article 197), which punish, with the same terms, unauthorized use of a counterfeit or usurped work under article 199. Article 229 puts the Code into force on the date of its publication, which the Diário da República issue carrying it dates to .

What it requires

Reuse law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (194 words)

Sao Tome and Principe has no press-publisher neighbouring right, no compelled platform-to-publisher bargaining regime, no recognized hot-news misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright law, and no statute or case law addressing hyperlinking or framing liability specifically has been located; each is a sourced absence rather than an unresolved question.

The operative instrument is Decree-Law No. 02/2017 (Copyright and Related Rights Code), which excludes news of the day and simple event reports from copyright protection altogether, and separately lets any person, once the author and source or title are credited where possible, make a regular press review of periodical articles, reproduce a short excerpt in reporting a current event, quote or summarize another's work for criticism or teaching, and reproduce an already-published current-affairs article on an economic, political, or religious topic unless its reproduction right was expressly reserved.

No Code provision states a headline-length or short-extract ceiling for the current-events branch, and no reported São Toméan decision applying either exception to a systematic news aggregator, as distinct from a traditional press review, has been located. The Code predates the concept of a machine-readable text-and-data-mining reservation entirely, so no opt-out mechanism of that kind exists either.

Snippet reproduction

Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017, exclusão das notícias do dia, revista de imprensa e citação

Decreto-Lei n.º 02/2017, arts. 7, 75(2) e 76, de 19 de Abril de 2017, Código do Direito de Autor e dos Direitos ConexosDecreto-Lei n.º 02/2017 de 19 de Abril de 2017, Diário da República n.º 47 de 17 de Abril de 2017

archived copyRead from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived 2023. Publisher's page: https://wipolex-res.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/pt/st/st007pt.pdf

In force since . Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 7(1)(a) excludes news of the day and reports of various events disclosed as simple information from copyright protection altogether, so a purely factual news item carries no copyright to begin with. For material that is protected, article 75(2)(c) permits, without the author's consent, a regular selection of periodical press articles in the form of a press review.

Article 75(2)(d) permits fixing, reproducing, or communicating short excerpts of a work when their use in reporting a current event is justified for information purposes. Article 75(2)(g) permits inserting citations or summaries of another's work in support of one's own views or for criticism, discussion, or teaching.

Article 75(2)(l) permits reproducing or communicating an already-accessible current-affairs article on an economic, political, or religious topic, or a broadcast work or material of like character, unless its reproduction or broadcast right has been expressly reserved. Article 76 conditions this free use on naming the author and publisher where possible and, for some of these uses, paying equitable remuneration.

None of these provisions states a length limit or a headline-only threshold, and no reported São Toméan decision testing whether a systematic aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets, as distinct from a traditional press review, falls within either exception has been located.

Sao Tome and Principe has no separate press-publisher neighbouring right, no compelled platform-to-publisher bargaining regime, no recognized hot-news or misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright law, and no case law on hyperlinking or framed display has been located.

Article 3(1)(b) protects a compilation as a copyright work only where its selection or arrangement of contents is itself an original creation, and the Code creates no sui generis database right and no text-and-data-mining exception or machine-readable opt-out mechanism. Article 229 puts the Code into force on the date of its publication, which the Diário da República issue carrying it dates to .

What it requires

Where nothing was found3 areas of law

These areas of law were researched here and no instrument was recorded. Each finding says what the research checked, as of the date under it. It describes our search, not a guarantee that no such law exists.

AI law

Sao Tome and Principe has no statute imposing an AI-transparency, output-labeling, high-risk-system, training-data, prohibited-practice, governance, or sector-specific AI duty.

The data-protection statute, Lei n.º 03/2016, binds the processing of personal data generally rather than the operation of an AI system as such, so it creates no duty under the seam that separates this topic from privacy, and no automated-decision-specific right of the kind some comprehensive privacy regimes carry has been located in its text.

The African Union, of which Sao Tome and Principe is a member state, adopted a non-binding Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy in 2024 calling on member states to develop national AI governance frameworks; this is a continental policy document, not a São Toméan statute, and creates no directly enforceable domestic obligation. No numbered bill or public draft of a São Toméan AI law has been located.

As of .

Cybersecurity law

Sao Tome and Principe is a CPLP (Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) member whose cyber-relevant statutes are in Portuguese, and its cybercrime statute, Lei n.º 15/2017 de 6 de Outubro de 2017 sobre Cibercrime, could not be independently read in full despite exhausting every fallback channel this profile names.

WIPO Lex carries no cybercrime or cybersecurity instrument for this jurisdiction at all: its member profile lists exactly seven national texts, and all seven are Industrial Property, Copyright or the Constitution, with the data-protection statute itself absent from that list because WIPO Lex is scoped to intellectual property.

ILO NATLEX returned no country page under the code tried, AfricanLII federates a national legal information institute for eighteen African states and Sao Tome and Principe is not one of them, and the data-protection authority's own site (nadpa-rapdp.org), which hosts the jurisdiction's privacy statute, hosts no cybercrime text alongside it.

FAOLEX and UNCTAD's legislation databases both put up a CAPTCHA on every route tried, through both the compliant and stealth crawler tiers, which this profile treats as a stop rather than a wall to escalate past.

So the seam question for Lei 15/2017, whether it holds an operator-facing or manufacturer-facing security-posture duty buried in a prevention or infrastructure-protection chapter as some regional 'Cibercrime' acts do, is not confirmed from the statute's own text: an official gazette scan or a CPLP legislative database mirror is what would settle it, and neither was reachable through the channels above.

The gap is narrowed, to a good degree of confidence, by the government's own current assessment of its cyber legal landscape.

The Autoridade Geral de Regulação (AGER), Sao Tome and Principe's telecommunications, postal, water and electricity regulator, published a National Cybersecurity Strategy ('Estratégia Nacional de Cibersegurança de São Tomé e Príncipe', version 2, ) and its accompanying Action Plan ('Plano de Ação', version 1.3, ), both produced with World Bank support by the NRD Cyber Security consultancy.

The Strategy's own gap analysis names exactly two enacted laws as the country's cyber legal foundation: 'São Tomé e Príncipe já deu passos significativos nesse sentido, como evidenciado pela implementação da Lei nº 15/2017 sobre Cibercrime e da Lei nº 3/2016 de Proteção de Dados Pessoais' (Sao Tome and Principe has already taken significant steps in this direction, as shown by its implementation of Law 15/2017 on Cybercrime and Law 3/2016 on Personal Data Protection), then devotes its fourth strategic objective to 'Consolidação do Estrutura Legal e Regulatória em Cibersegurança' (Consolidation of the Legal and Regulatory Structure for Cybersecurity), framed throughout as work still needed rather than a description of what already binds.

The Action Plan that operationalizes the Strategy is explicit that a critical-infrastructure security regulation does not yet exist: its second program lists 'P2.1: Elaboração de regulamentação em matéria de cibersegurança para os ativos e operadores críticos' (Drafting of cybersecurity regulation for critical assets and operators) and 'P2.2: Identificação de ativos e operadores críticos' (Identification of critical assets and operators) as initiatives still to be carried out, each with its own multi-year budget line, and it lists 'Promoção do Desenvolvimento Seguro de Software' (Promotion of secure software development) only as a voluntary good-practice pillar under its adoption-of-good-practices objective, not as a legal mandate on a manufacturer.

Because the government's own inventory of its cyber legal tools, published for exactly this purpose in December 2023, stops at the Cybercrime and Data Protection Acts and treats critical-infrastructure and secure-software regulation as a not-yet-built future step, Lei 15/2017 is treated here as an offense-and-procedure statute of the kind this topic's profile assigns to scraping rather than as carrying a Test 1 security-posture duty.

That determination rests on the Strategy's own framing rather than on Lei 15/2017's own text, which is not independently confirmed and could carry a provision the Strategy's framing did not anticipate.

Lei n.º 03/2016 sobre a Protecção de Dados Pessoais (adopted ) is this jurisdiction's privacy row and is not repeated here; its own safeguards article, which requires a controller to put in place premises-entry, data-carrier, disclosure, system-access and transmission controls for sensitive or credit data, is Test 2, a comprehensive regime's own security-of-processing clause, and stays with that regime rather than moving here.

Lei n.º 07/2017 sobre a Organização e Funcionamento da ANPDP is the data-protection authority's own organizing statute: institutional, not a duty on a private-sector operator, and this jurisdiction has no other bound party (a licensed operator, a certification-service-provider) whose role this corpus's activity vocabulary cannot express, so no role-inexpressible-deferral entry is warranted either.

Decreto-Lei n.º 19/2016 (Código de Investimentos, in force ) carries no security-of-systems criterion tied to its investment incentives so far as its WIPO Lex record shows: that record's own subject-matter tag is Industrial Property only, and nothing in it ties a cyber or IT-security condition to the incentives the Code grants; its full text was not independently read, so this is a metadata-level check rather than a full-text one.

The telecommunications sector, the place a small-island jurisdiction would most plausibly site an operator-facing security duty, has none on the record AGER itself publishes.

AGER's own legislative index lists every telecommunications and electricity instrument it administers: licensing decrees, tariff and interconnection regimes, spectrum and numbering rules, SIM-card registration, and company-specific network licenses (including the grants to Companhia Santomense de Telecomunicações and UNITEL-STP), and none of them sets a security standard, an incident-reporting duty, or a safeguards requirement.

The foundational telecommunications statute, Lei n.º 3/2004 (self-cited as Lei n.º 3/04, Diário da República n.º 6, ), criminalizes interception and disclosure of communications content at its Article 31 ('Violação do Sigilo das Comunicações'), an intruder offense of the kind this topic leaves to scraping rather than an operator duty, and separately lists confidentiality and neutrality as one category a network license's conditions must cover, without stating any technical security standard to meet it, so that clause is a bare confidentiality condition rather than a security-posture duty.

Sao Tome and Principe acceded to the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime (the Budapest Convention) on , entering into force for it on , per its WIPO Lex treaty record; that is an offense-harmonization treaty rather than a source of operator duties and does not change this determination.

Banco Central de São Tomé e Príncipe's public site was checked for a cybersecurity or IT-risk directive reaching a bank, a payment-service provider, or a payment-system operator, all of which sit within its published supervisory remit.

Its homepage names no such circular or 'Norma de Aplicação Permanente' among the headlines it surfaces, but its full library of 'Normativos e Circulares' and 'Manuais e Instrutivos' sits behind client-rendered navigation this session did not crawl exhaustively, so the banking sector specifically is an open research gap rather than a confirmed absence, distinct from the telecommunications sector's fuller check above.

As of .

Age gating law

Sao Tome and Principe has no adult-content age-verification law, social-media minor-access restriction, app-store age-verification requirement, or age-appropriate design code.

Lei n.º 15/2017, de 6 de Outubro de 2017 (Lei sobre Cibercrime), Article 10(3), requires an institution operating a platform in cyberspace to guarantee, through technological means, the reliability of a user's identity and the confirmation of their email during account registration, an anti-fraud identity check tied to registration rather than a duty to verify a user's age or gate access to content.

Lei n.º 2/93, de 8 de Abril de 1993 (Lei de Imprensa), and its amendments Lei n.º 3/96 and Lei n.º 4/96, both of 1996 (creating and organizing the Conselho Superior de Imprensa, the press regulator), set the country's press-freedom framework and the regulator's composition and procedure; none of the three names a child, a minor, or an age threshold.

Lei n.º 1/2001 (Lei da Televisão), Article 21(2) and (4), requires that a broadcast likely to negatively affect a child's or adolescent's personality, or one classified as unsuitable for viewers under sixteen for cinema or video distribution, carry an explicit warning and air only after 10 p.m., a content-labelling and scheduling duty addressed to the broadcaster rather than an age-verification or access-control duty.

Lei n.º 2/2001 (Lei da Radiodifusão), Article 17(b), bars advertising of products of pornographic or obscene content outright, a blanket content prohibition with no age-verification mechanism. Lei n.º 3/04, on establishing and operating national telecommunications networks and services, and Lei n.º 19/2018 (Código de Família), covering marriage, filiation, parental authority, and guardianship, contain no internet, media, or age-verification provision at all.

As of .

Case law

  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe AI law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe privacy law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe scraping law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe cybersecurity law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe communications law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe content moderation law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe product and AI liability law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe digital accessibility law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe age gating law
  • No current case law for Sao Tome and Principe reuse law
Drafted with AI

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made

This page covers the instruments LexLint has researched to a stage. Instruments named in the law library but not yet researched are counted in the head and are not listed here. Every entry carries its own primary source on its note page. This is a research index, not legal advice.