The Kenya Information and Communications (Consumer Protection) Regulation provides a comprehensive consumer protection framework that applies to online transactions.

Kenya has not signed the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts.

Kenya has not adopted national legislation based on or influenced by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Electronic Commerce.

Kenya has not adopted national legislation based on or influenced by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Electronic Signatures.

The Environmental Management and Coordination (Extended Producer Responsibility) Regulations impose obligations for importers of used electronic goods such as licences, registration for compliance schemes and reporting to ensure that the products comply with the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), amongst other requirements.

It is reported that there is a requirement to obtain a Certificate of Conformity from a Kenya Bureau of Standards appointed pre-export verification of conformity (PVoC) partner. To import any commodity into Kenya, an importer has to enlist the services of a clearing agent who will process the import documentation through Kenya Customs electronically on the Simba 2005 system and clear the goods on the company's behalf. It is the seller’s responsibility to ensure that shipments to Kenya happen only after issuance of a Certificate of Conformity. In addition, products containing the QMark do not have to go through inspection for compliance upon entry into another Partner State of the East African Community.

Companies have expressed concerns regarding the prolonged duration for Kenyan Customs to release shipments, along with the excessive formalities involved. The one-stop customs clearance system in Kenya reportedly does not function as expected, and the pre-arrival processing of electronic documents is ineffective. Additionally, there are reports of inconsistent application of classification and valuation decisions within the system, as well as unnecessary transit inspections.

According to the Communications Authority of Kenya, an application for Type Approval must be made using the Application Form for Type Approval/Type Acceptance of ICT Equipment. It is reported that the homologation procedure in Kenya is more complicated than in most African countries. Depending on regulations and type of equipment, the authority may require product samples for further examination or simply issue an exemption letter. The validity period of conformity documents can be unlimited (exemption letters) or limited to 6 months (certificates of conformity) after which the authority automatically issues an unlimited certificate.

A basic legal framework on intermediary liability beyond copyright infringement is absent in Kenya's law and jurisprudence. Except for the provisions in Section 35 of the Copyright Act, there are no explicit limitations on liability for activities such as "hosting, caching, linking, or acting as mere conduits." The Electronic Transactions Bill of 2007, which was eventually repealed, had proposed limitations on both criminal and civil liability for third parties involved in caching, information location, and conduit functions, drawing extensively from the EU Commerce Directive.

Regulation 5 of the Registration of SIM-Cards Regulations requires every telecom operator to register its users, including the provision of personal data such as names and national identity cards.

Section 13 of Act No. 12 creates the offence, and outlaws hate speech, and Section 62 makes an offence for any media enterprise to publish words intended to incite feelings of contempt, hatred, hostility, violence or discrimination against any person, group or community on the basis of ethnicity or race. A media enterprise can be fined up to one million shillings (USD 8,800) for publishing hate speech.
In addition, under the "Guidelines for the Prevention of Dissemination of Undesirable Bulk Political SMS and social media content via Electronic Communications Networks", intermediaries (bulk messaging and social media service providers) can be held liable for spreading falsehoods, hate speech and insults. Art. 13.6 of the Guidelines establishes that it shall be the responsibility of the Administrator of a social media platform to moderate and control undesirable content and discussions that have been brought to their attention on their platform. In this respect, Art. 13.7 provides that social media service providers shall be required to pull down accounts used in disseminating undesirable political content on their platform that have been brought to their attention within 24 hours.

It is reported that, for the second consecutive year, the authorities in Kenya restricted access to Telegram during national examinations in 2024.

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) is mandated to license all telecommunications systems and services in the country, including content service providers. The Content Service Provider licence allows a licensee to provide content-related services to end users who are customers of the application service providers. Content service providers use the infrastructure of network facilities providers and the application service providers' systems to reach their customers. The services offered by content service providers are of information, entertainment, education, health, social, etc. nature, which can either be text, voice, or video clips delivered to a customer’s mobile device on request or as subscribed to by the customer.
CA is guided by the provisions of the relevant statutes, including the Kenya Information and Communications Act, 1998 (Section 25) and the Kenya Communications Regulations 2001 (Part V). The CA has a Unified Licensing Framework (ULF) in place, which is technology- and service-neutral. The ULF market is structured into three main licenses: Network Facilities Provider, Application Service Provider, and Content Service Provider.

Section 26.1 of the National Payment Act provides that the Central Bank, the Central Bank settlement system participants, payment clearing house system operators and system operators shall retain all records obtained by them during the course of the operations and administration of a payment system or the issuance of a payment instrument, for a period of seven years from the date of each particular record.

Section 31 of the Data Protection Act No. 24 of 2019 requires the performance of protection impact assessment in cases where a processing operation is likely to result in high risk to the rights and freedoms of a data subject by virtue of its nature, scope, context and purposes.