Kenya’s legislative body has announced a couple of revisions to the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, 2018.
The first amendment targets the Registration of Persons Act of 2015, which applies to all people who are registered as Kenyans. The Act defines the processes for the appointment of the principal registrar and staff, issuance, production and inspection of IDs, among other requirements that go in line with general guidelines for registration of persons.
A proposal has been made to amend Cap. 107 of the Act to allow the establishment of the National Integrated Identity Management System. In principle, the body, if established, will have a legal mandate to capture geographical (GPS coordinates) and biometric data of persons during the registration process. Details about biometrics technology to be deployed have not been given, but our guess is the body may deploy fingerprint-based biometrics that has been adopted in other countries across the globe.
Such a development would also require privacy standards to ensure privacy protection in line with biometric practices.
Amendments have also been proposed for the Kenya Information and Communication Act, 1998 (No. 2 of 1998) that provides checks and balances for the communication sector in the country. Several laws in regard to this Act have since been reviewed. However, the current amendments aim to provide for the mode of appointment of the chairperson of Kenya’s ICT regulator, the Communications Authority (CA). At the moment, the President is tasked with the appointment.
The third amendment targets the Copyright Act, 2001 (No. 12 of 2001), which provides a framework for licensing and supervision of activities of collective management organizations and updating copyright legislation, to mention a few. It spells out registration requirements for music, audio, visuals, recordings, and broadcasting for copyright protection.
In particular, suggested amendments call for shakeups in the composition of members of the Kenya Copyright Board that enforces copyright definitions. Details of such changes have not been announced, yet.
In sum, some content creators are yet to fully grasp the details of copyright laws as highlighted in this post.
We will update this post as soon as members of the National Assembly gather to analyze the suggested amendments.
