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As Kenya gears up for adoption of high-speed 5G connectivity, attention is shifting to the sanctity of personal data protection amid concerns of weak privacy laws threatening Kenyans to data hawking.

Experts have warned that while the technology offers high speed transfer of data in minimal time, it will create a slew of data security challenges through unintentional and data ex-filtration.

These fears abound even as tech giants continue to harvest user data and passing it on to third parties for commercial purposes, thus making billions of shillings leveraging on personal data.

The apprehension cmes at a time Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) is in the market to tax e-commerce platforms, particularly those that operate locally but pay taxes in other jurisdictions, to boost tax collections.

Data harvesting

It is the first real attempt by an African country to tax tech firms who rake in billions of dollars in advertising through harvesting and sharing of personal data for tailor-made ads.

The regulator will work with the Communications Authority of Kenya to obtain transactions data by resident and foreign-based app developers doing business in Kenya.

Economist Samuel Nyandemo says a robust regulatory and tax regime be put in place to ensure all firms doing business in Kenya are levied.

“Tech firms should not be given tax holidays. We should make these firms pay a certain proportion of their income to the government,” he said adding that this would expand the local tax base.

Richard Muthui, an executive consultant at Internet Solutions said the companies tapping online commercial opportunities are benefiting from data mining and so is the country. 

“It is more of an opportunity cost, firms such as Google come in and use 5G to develop products and make revenue. This gives them economic exposure,” he said.

He said that while the State might not tap all the revenue, on the flip-side, it can utilise the new technology to make things work more efficiently for the good of the people. Last year, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed into law the Finance Act which broadens the Income Tax Act net to include income accrued through digital marketplaces.

It followed France’s move to introduce a controversial new tax on the profits of large technology firms before it pressed breaks on the contested move last month.

The new law would have seen a three per cent tax applied to the French revenue from large internet companies.

Like France and India before it, Kenya is trying to get its cut of every digital transaction within its territory. The argument is that it is only fair to tap into the revenue accrued from the digital economy taking place within their territory.

Predictive analysis

Amnesty International has raised the red flag against mass harvesting of data by the ‘big five’ companies Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google.

There are fears that big data analytics, which has created a golden age of surveillance to the ad-tech industr, will become more potent with deployment of 5G.

A digital harvester combs through an individual’s online or offline activity and collects data for predictive analysis.

Every time a user clicks or posts online, browses a website, uses an e-mail account to run an app, swipes a loyalty card or undertakes any other activity on the internet, digital harvesters use this activity to identify patterns, which are then sold to interested buyers.