Leo S.
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Adam B.
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Last updated:
July 30, 2024
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The wild natural life shares the landscape of Kenya with modern cities, which has turned the African country into quite the popular tourist destination for safari lovers. Lions, leopards, giraffes, and many other animals can be seen just a few miles away from the skyscrapers of the capital city Nairobi, but the charming coastal beach resorts make this hidden African pearl a great choice for beach enthusiasts, too.
Kenya is also the African country where internet development has been the most significant, having the highest internet penetration of the entire continent and no shortage or access restrictions to the most demanded services, including social media, VoIP apps, and VPNs. However, Freedom House considers Kenya ‘partly free’ given some legislation that questions free speech, even though this has been put in place to protect against fake news and hate speech.
Kenya has followed the worldwide tendency and invested in broadband and mobile internet, which made the country a true success case. Back in 2011 less than 25% of the population had access to the internet but, given the growth of the mobile sector and the widespread nature of free public hotspots, by the end of 2017 that number had increased to 85%, a notable value that has put Kenya in front of every other African country. With a total population of around 50 million people, this is quite impressive considering that Kenya’s heritage of abundant wildlife and native tribes is still very much preserved.
Things are not so bright when it comes to the quality of access, however. According to Speedtest.net’s global index, in the beginning of 2019 Kenya’s average internet speeds were below rank 100 in both mobile and fixed broadband variants. Still, considering how fiber optic is already a reality, the continuous investment on the overall infrastructure is a certainty, and so eventually better speeds and even greater penetration percentages will be achieved. And all the better if access to Facebook, Twitter, Skype, WhatsApp and so on remains free and as tolerant as it is now.
Kenya is in a transitionary period when it comes to online privacy laws. The country currently doesn’t have a specific law on just this topic, but the Constitution of 2010 does mention the right to privacy. However, in 2018 the government approved the so-called Data Protection Bill and, if passed, it will be the country’s first law on this subject. The current draft legislation is inspired by the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union, and so the main highlight among its key aspects are the obligations that data controllers must respect when dealing with people’s data, such as user consent, collection and purpose limitation, and more.
After several years of ‘free’ ratings by Freedom House, in 2018 Kenya became ‘partly free’, mostly due to the “online manipulation and disinformation tactics on social media [that] proliferated during the 2017 elections season”. As a result, the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act was passed in May 2018, criminalizing the spread of fake news and hate speech with a sentence of up to ten years in prison. Some argue that this restricts free speech and some citizens were actually arrested for “alleged hate speech and criticizing the government online”. However, the good news is that none of the usual services are censored, such as social media platforms, VoIP services, or VPNs.
With the development of the mobile communications sector and the fact that it represents the largest percentage of connections to the internet, streaming services are also becoming popular among Kenyans. And while the market is still dominated by the media giants such as Netflix – whose library size within Kenyan borders doesn’t even come close to the U.S. or European countries – there are also several country-specific streaming alternatives have emerged in the last years, too.
Benefiting from the fast pace of internet penetration growth in Kenya, Eziki debuted in 2011 as the pioneer of online video streaming in the country, while Mdundo arrived a year later as a music streaming app specialized in African music. The latter was particularly important for Kenya and other African countries since some of the industry leaders – like Spotify or SoundCloud – still have limited availability for such content within the territory even up to this day, though Apple Music is available.
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