By: Dwight Links
A public stakeholders’ engagement about the establishment of Namibia’s cybercrime legislation was held in Windhoek this past Friday. Organised by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT), it attracted specialised interest from the public in attendance.
On a previous occasion, the cybercrime and data protection bills had been developed and presented together before, but were retracted from the National Assembly shortly thereafter for further development. The last indications of such presentations had been before 2020.
This year’s engagement saw presentations on the United Nations (UN) Convention on Cybercrime that Namibia had signed in 2024 and the draft bill which would feature in Namibia. Legislative drafting consultant Johnson Okello gave indications on the overview of the bill, how it would speak to the electronic transactions act, the access to information act, the whistleblowers act, the data protection bill and other laws currently in place for the transmission of information.
Moreover, MICT executive director Linda Nakale explained that “There was an issue relating to the Budapest Convention and the possible best practice of adopting it, as we have our own rights in Namibia as a sovereign country. The EU convention was more about the needs of European member states and not everyone else.”
According to Nakale, there were a few countries outside of Europe that subscribed to the Budapest Convention when it was developed.
“When the earlier presentation on the UN Convention was done, it highlighted that there were parts of the Budapest Convention used in it. This includes issues of data protection, and we have a different bill on data protections. But, the Convention will outline what the criminal acts are, and these are the guidelines,” she noted.
This also brought into focus how the AU’s own convention would impact the possible laws of cybercrime and data protection in Namibia.
“We signed that AU convention, meaning that we have an obligation to ensure that part of those laws are integrated into ours to a certain extent,” Nakale highlighted as she outlined that Namibia has been part of the UN Convention for the past two years.
The UN Convention Against Cybercrime, also known as the Hanoi Convention, is a treaty to facilitate international cooperation in the enforcement of cybercrime laws. It was proposed by Russia in 2017 and adopted by the General Assembly in December 2024 amid resistance from human rights organisations. Many of these concerns even stem from some divisions within of the UN, including academia and broader civil society networks concerned over the languages applied to these laws.
As the country does not have any legislation in place yet – besides the electronic transactions act, the access to information act, the whistleblowers act, and the data protection bill -directly governing cyber criminal behaviour, Friday’s engagement proved vital, as the last public engagement on the matter was in 2024.
Speaking on the synergy of laws, Nakale noted that it would most likely be through the Communications Act of Namibia. As a starting point, she indicated that “There is a section, under general provisions, that says that if you use ICT to create content with the intention of annoying another person, then you are contravening the law.”
In terms of standardisation, MICT outlined that the Namibia Standards Institute and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have guidelines that can be integrated into Namibia’s cybercrime laws.
