A ruling by the Government Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC) has set a precedent that should warn all institutions, both educational and others that deal in some way with minors, against 'posting' images of children and young people under 18 on their social profiles without parental consent.
The law has actually been in force for a few years and some people have been complying with it for some time, but it is not the case in all schools and in all spheres, especially in the case of non-profit organisations or NGOs that perhaps directly or indirectly subsidise schools or other institutions attended by the young and very young.

The precedent was set a few days ago in a school in Kiambu County, curiously enough with an Italian name, the 'Roma School' in Uthiru, which had published pictures of its pupils on its social profiles without first asking permission from their parents or guardians.
The ODPC fined the school no less than 4.5 million shillings (almost EUR 30,000) on the grounds that the pictures were uploaded without the parents' knowledge, who will be compensated with dividends from the fine.

The government office added on its X Twitter profile, 'This, being the first and highest penalty imposed on an educational facility, sends a message to schools and other facilities that process personal data of minors to obtain the consent of parents or guardians before processing minors' data.

With regard to the area we are dealing with in particular, that of Italians living in Kenya or frequenting it and being involved or affected by it in various ways, we urge everyone to exercise great caution when photographing or filming children.
This is a natural practice, often driven by an emotional transport for African children and their condition, as opposed to the joy they convey with the many meanings that are known to those who have already approached them: the smiles, the big eyes, the situations of sharing and instinctive requests for everything necessary and lacking to them, which create empathy.

Clearly it is not they who are the problem, but the rules that invoke privacy and which today are also very much in the spotlight and can be managed by parents, who in addition to rightly defending the intimacy of their children, can now see a chance to make money from those who use the faces of the little ones as they please, even if only naively, to share them on social network pages.

Those who therefore run schools or children's centres in Kenya or attend them, but also villages or other, should from now on be much more careful and above all make the parents of the children sign the classic disclaimer if they want to put their faces in their posts and on their 'stories'.