After months of complaints from senior government officials about the misuse of social media, particularly among Kenyan youth, the government has issued key directives to social media companies with platforms accessible to Kenyans.
In the directives, social media companies will be required to establish physical offices in the country to enable the government to ensure accountability of the platforms' usage. ''To ensure responsibility and accountability in the face of rising disinformation, social media manipulation, and online abuse, all social media organizations operating in the country must establish a physical presence within our jurisdiction,'' the Ministry of Interior announced.
Particularly, the order is directed towards global conglomerates including Meta, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg and owns Facebook (with 3.07 billion users globally) and Instagram (2.4 billion users globally), as well as X (600 million users globally) which is owned by World's richest man Elon Mask.
Other affected social media companies such as TikTok will also be required to have physical offices in Kenya.
