Kenya's AI Bill Rejected by Senate ICT Committee!

The Kenya Senate Standing Committee on Information, Communication and Technology recommended to reject Proposed AI bill! Kicks it back to the Ministry of Information, Communications and Digital Economy.

Of the 39 stakeholders who gave a view on the Bill as a whole, 23 wanted it withdrawn, deferred or substantially reworked and 16 backed it. Most of the rest argued clause by clause, often for stronger protections. The Committee sided with the sceptics and recommended that the Senate not proceed until the National AI Policy is out.

What stakeholders said about Kenya's AI Bill

Below is our AI Generated analysis of the Committees report, which can be found in full here https://libraryir.parliament.go.ke/server/api/core/bitstreams/a0d7c5d3-6b1b-42b1-bb96-428c10ed898a/content

We used Claude Opus 5.5 for the analysis and chart generation.

Executive Summary

Who was for the Bill, and who was against it?

Overall verdicts as stated in the submissions. Most stakeholders never said whether the Bill should pass. They proposed amendments to specific clauses, which are mapped further down.

Where each stakeholder sits

Each dot is one stakeholder, placed by what its proposals would do to the Bill. Toward the left, most proposals lighten obligations, narrow scope or cut penalties. Toward the right, most add duties, rights or safeguards. Dot size shows how many positions it took; colour shows its overall verdict, where it gave one.

What each group pushed for

Share of each group's positions by what the proposal would do. Industry, banks and big tech mostly sought lighter duties. Unions, rights groups, academics and individual citizens mostly sought stronger protections.

The most contested issues

Positions per issue, with proposals to loosen to the left and proposals to tighten to the right. Issues are ordered by how evenly the two camps were matched, so the real fights are at the top.

The flashpoints

The clauses where stakeholders pulled in opposite directions, with who stood where.

Other suggestions that kept coming up

Recurring proposals, counted by how many different stakeholders raised each one. Hover or tap a bar to see who.

What the Committee concluded

• No policy foundation yet. The Ministry of ICT is finalising the National AI and Emerging Technologies Policy and says the Bill was drafted without it.

• Too broad, too early, too punitive. Heavy compliance burdens and criminal penalties fall on small local developers who mostly build on foreign models through APIs.

• Institutional overlap. A “super regulator” would duplicate the Data Protection Commissioner and the Communications Authority and add to the public wage bill.

• Technical gaps. The Bill does not cover general-purpose models, cross-border enforcement or post-deployment monitoring.

• Recommendation: the Senate should not proceed, so the Bill can be aligned with the forthcoming policy.