Kenya: High Court has declars the roll out of Huduma Namba illegal

The Kenyan High Court has found that the roll out of Kenya’s digital ID system, Huduma Namba was illegal, since a data protection impact assessment was not carried out. In a judgement delivered on 14 October, the court considered the implications of an earlier judgment where the court gave a greenlight for  Huduma Namba, subject to a comprehensive legal framework first being put in place. The court expected that the Data Protection Act would have been applied retrospectively, and that a data protection impact assessment would have been carried out. Consequently, the court ordered the government to conduct a DPIA before further processing of Huduma Namba data or rolling out Huduma cards.