Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signs Data Protection Bill into law on November 8, 2019. PHOTO | PSCU
Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday signed into law the
Data Protection Bill 2019 and in a separate session met visiting
executives of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
AWS is an enterprise of the American e-commerce giant Amazon that offers cloud computing services.
The
new data law establishes the office of the Data Commissioner and sets
out the requirements for the protection of personal data processed by
both public and private entities.
It
further outlines key principles that will govern data processing, sets
out the rights of data subjects and assigns duties to data controllers
and data processors.
In
addition to setting the conditions for the transfer of personal data
outside Kenya, the Act provides for the exemptions to processing of data
and outlines data handling offences and attendant penalties.
The Bill was presented to the President for signature at State House Nairobi by National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi.
Also present were National Assembly Majority
Leader Aden Duale, Head of Public Service Joseph Kinyua, ICT CS Joe
Mucheru, Attorney General Paul Kihara and State House Deputy Chief of
Staff Njee Muturi.
Amazon meeting
The
President's meeting with the Amazon Web Services executives led by Vice
President Teresa Carlson was a follow up to a discussion the Head of
State had with the group during his official visit to Washington last
year.
During
the meeting, the AWS Vice President applauded Kenya for the passage of
the new data law and informed him of Amazon's plans to set up an "edge
location" in Nairobi.
An edge location is where end users access services located on Amazon Web Services.
Ms
Carlson said the new data law paves the way for the organisation’s
investment that will enable Nairobi to join other global cities as an
edge location.
President Kenyatta
welcomed the establishment of an edge location in the country by AWS and
assured that Kenya has the requisite infrastructure and educated young
population that will benefit from the business opportunities and jobs
that will be created.
“I am
delighted to welcome AWS’s investment in Kenya. The launch of Amazon
CloudFront will put us in the forefront of accelerated innovation -
enabling start-ups, enterprises and our government agencies to focus on
building the best user experience,” the President said.
He
added: “Kenya is an innovator in digital financial services in Africa.
Having advanced cloud infrastructure in the country will support our
ability to flourish as a nation and reach our potential as one of
Africa’s fastest growing digital economies.”
The Head of State noted that the investment by Amazon will help strengthen Kenya’s position as a regional business hub.
“This
is key for us especially now that we are going digital on almost
everything. We are currently building the digital infrastructure and we
welcome any support that we can get from you,” the President told the
Amazon team.
Ms Carlson said her
organization will also provide training in digital skills and help in
the creation of quality jobs for the youth in Kenya.
The
AWS cloud platform offers featured services to millions of customers
including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises and leading
government agencies.
Some of the
benefits of the edge location provided by AWS include giving businesses
and web application developers an easy and cost effective way to
distribute data housed in Kenya to thousands of users with low latency
and high data transfer speeds.
The
service will allow businesses quick and reliable access to their
information, which improves the quality of internet to the end user and
help reduce the cost of transferring data.
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