Kenya passed the Data Protection Act in 2019 to operationalise the right to privacy under Article 31 of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. The Country is still trying to understand the ramifications of the Act in processing personal data and how to comply with the relatively new law. KICTANet has been working on a project to strengthen women’s online safety and data protection for the past year. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH supports the project.
As part of the project, KICTANet has developed three learning materials to raise awareness and deepen understanding of data protection with a gender lens. These learning materials include a comic strip on women and data, a policy brief on data protection and privacy from a gender perspective and the Guidebook on Data Protection and Privacy from a Gender Perspective.
What will you learn from the Guidebook?
The Guidebook is one of a kind as it breaks down data protection principles under the Kenya Data Protection Act, 2019 and other relevant policies in simple and fun language. Each chapter has exercises to assess your understanding and a takeaway section with a chapter summary.
The guidebook starts with a comprehensive introduction to Kenya’s privacy and data protection laws and policies. Each policy document and its relationship to data protection is explained. A chapter on key data protection laws principles such as data minimization, purpose limitation and adequate safeguards for international data transfers follows this.
The last sections of the guidebook shed light on the data subject’s rights and the legal and quasi-judicial remedies in case of data breaches. This section gives a step-by-step guide to the complaints handling mechanism of the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner. It goes a step further and illustrates how to report privacy violations on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Finally, the guidebook offers basic digital security tips for women to avoid or minimize data breaches online.
Who can use this guidebook?
The guidebook targets women, women human rights defenders, data protection practitioners and gender experts working at the intersection of gender and technology. The guidebook will offer a reference point for users, especially those without a legal background, to deepen their knowledge and understanding about data protection and the gendered impact of data protection on women and spur conversations about data protection aspects that often go overlooked.
We believe that the guidebook is a timely and much-needed resource for women in Kenya to catch up with the data protection framework and learn how to enforce their rights as data subjects. More reforms, highlighted in our policy brief on data protection and privacy from a gender perspective, are needed to enhance women’s data protection. However, the Data Protection framework offers a great starting point for making women’s right to privacy a reality.
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Angela Minayo is KICTANet’s Women’s Digital Rights Programs Officer. She is passionate about gender and inclusion in internet governance processes.
