What does Kenya's draft ICT bill change for SIMs, phone imports and apps?

The draft Kenya Information and Communications (Amendment) Bill, 2026 would make mobile operators register the subscriber rather than the SIM card, a change meant to cover eSIMs. It would write type approval of phones, routers and other communications equipment into law, require digital platforms serving users in Kenya to notify the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), and raise the top fine for running an unlicensed telecoms service from KSh 1 million to KSh 5 million (about US$38,500 at the Central Bank of Kenya's rate of KSh 129.96 to the dollar on 5 November). Written comments close on 17 November 2026.

The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy has posted the revised draft, a notice and a comment template on the CA website. The ministry says a multi-stakeholder committee it set up to review the Kenya Information and Communications Act (Cap. 411A) wrote the draft and revised it after earlier public consultations.

The main changes, by section of the Act:

1. SIM cards and eSIMs. Section 27A now obliges an operator to collect a customer's details before it "sells a SIM-card"; the draft changes this to before it "registers a subscriber", which the bill's memorandum says accommodates "embedded SIMs and other digital identifiers". The details required stay the same: full name, identity card number, date of birth, gender, and physical and postal address. The section that lets operators hire registration agents, and bars those agents from hawking SIM cards, would be repealed, and regulations under section 27D would cover subscriber registration instead of SIM-card registration. Kenya had 88.0 million mobile SIM subscriptions in April to June 2026, the fourth quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, according to the CA.

2. Phones, routers and other equipment. A new sub-Part after section 34, "Electronic Communications Equipment Type Approval", would oblige the CA to set standards for each category of equipment and check all electronic communications equipment and systems against them. The ICT Cabinet Secretary may make type-approval regulations "including the procedure, fees and conditions". The new sub-Part is meant to curb substandard, counterfeit or harmful equipment. The CA already runs type approval. Its application form (version 1.6, April 2026) covers mobile phones, routers, modems and Mi-Fis, asks for a letter of agency from the manufacturer or distributor, a sample and test reports from accredited laboratories, and warns that sample testing may take up to six months. The fee schedule on its website, effective 1 July 2012, charges KSh 1,000 (about US$7.7) for a GSM terminal, modem or router for personal use and KSh 4,000 for marketing.

3. Apps and online platforms. A new section 85C covers any provider of "an online environment that facilitates interactions, transactions and content sharing among users" that is established in Kenya or delivers services to users in Kenya. Providers would have to notify the CA of their particulars and services, keep the service available and safe, publish their terms and conditions, set up a complaints mechanism, report unlawful activity to the CA with the steps taken, and comply with Kenyan law. The CA would receive and help resolve user complaints, keep a register of platforms and monitor compliance. The Kenyan tech news site TechTrends Kenya reported on 4 November that this would reach Meta, TikTok, X and other platforms.

4. Fines. The ceiling for running a telecoms system or service without a licence (sections 24 and 34) and for dishonestly obtaining a telecoms service (section 28) would rise from KSh 1 million to KSh 5 million. A new general penalty in section 96A sets a fine of up to KSh 1 million, three years in prison or both for offences with no penalty of their own. A licensee that fails to fix a breach could have its licence suspended or revoked, or pay from KSh 20,000 (now KSh 500,000) up to 0.2 per cent of the previous year's gross turnover for each year the breach continues.

5. Spectrum fees for operators. Section 25A(3) to (5) now lets the CA accept spectrum licence fees above KSh 1 billion in equal instalments over up to ten years, if the applicant is Kenyan or at least 51 per cent Kenyan-owned and undertakes to build at least 500 base transceiver stations across the country within three years. The draft deletes those subsections, so every applicant would pay in full before the licence is granted. Safaricom spent KSh 16.3 billion on licences in Kenya in the year to March 2026, Business Daily reported on 3 November, adding that a CA spokesperson declined to say which companies had used instalments.

The draft also repeals section 29, the offence of sending "grossly offensive" or knowingly false messages, which the High Court declared unconstitutional in 2016. It repeals sections 83Y and 84D, the offences of damaging or denying access to a computer system and of publishing obscene information in electronic form, which the memorandum says are now covered by the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act. Complaints against licensees would go to the CA instead of the Communications and Multimedia Appeals Tribunal, with appeals from the CA to the Tribunal, whose chair and members the Judicial Service Commission would appoint. The postal licensing requirement would be extended to courier services.

The text is a draft for validation, written as a bill for Parliament to enact, and the date line of its memorandum, above the name of Cabinet Secretary William Kabogo Gitau, is still blank. It sets no type-approval fees and leaves the detail of subscriber registration, type approval and platform duties to regulations the Cabinet Secretary may make later, including under a new section 106.

Send comments to [email protected] by 17 November 2026 on the ministry's template, which asks for the name of the person or organisation, the clause of the bill, the proposal and the justification. The template, the bill and the notice are on the CA's bill page. The virtual validation forum runs on 25 November from 9am to 12 noon East Africa Time; participants register through the Microsoft Teams link in the notice and receive a joining link after registering. The CA's general contacts are [email protected] and +254 703 042 000.