👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – New CEO at Absa Kenya

Every time you sign up for an online service or create an account with a company whose servers sit in another country, your personal information may be crossing a border without you ever seeing a passport. Kenya’s data regulator now wants to make sure those journeys have some rules. 

What happened? The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC), Kenya’s data protection regulator, has issued new guidance for organisations that transfer personal data outside Kenya or receive it from another country. The guidance applies to organisations handling personal data in Kenya and sets out what they need to consider before sending that information abroad. 

Explain like I’m new here: Kenya is part of a global digital economy, and many businesses rely on services and cloud infrastructure that may be hosted outside the country. Kenya is building plenty of its own infrastructure. The country had nearly 20 megawatts (MW) of data centre capacity in 2025, with about 150MW of additional capacity planned. 

However, more local data centres don’t mean all Kenyan data suddenly stays in Kenya. Companies can still use foreign cloud providers and overseas software platforms.

What are companies supposed to do? The guidance is aimed at data controllers and data processors that decide how personal data is handled and the organisations processing it for them. They now have clearer guidance on when cross-border transfers are lawful, what safeguards they need, and how to assess whether the country or organisation receiving the data provides adequate protection. 

Why should you care? The information being moved around can include financial information, location data, health information, biometrics, and other sensitive details. Kenya’s data protection framework gives people the right to know how their information is used. Therefore, the new law increases accountability for who gets your information and how it is protected once it leaves the country—which is useful when dealing with multinationals and when, or if, they eventually exit the country.