In March 2026, EIFL and the Geneva Centre on Knowledge Governance (GCKG) submitted comments on Kenya’s proposed Copyright and Related Rights Bill, 2026. 

From the perspective of research, education, and cultural heritage institutions, provisions on fair dealing and text and data analysis are more straightforward than the previous Copyright and Related Rights Bill, 2025, and easier for libraries and researchers to understand and apply.

However, other amendments will have a negative impact. For example, the previous unambiguously open fair dealing provision appears to have been converted into a closed list limited to the enumerated purposes (removing the flexibility necessary to accommodate technological change). 

Two important provisions have been deleted: contract override (that safeguards exceptions from contract terms), and the exception for the making of temporary, cache copies (integral to using a computer or transferring information over a computer network). Two new tests have been added. The three-step test, an abstract formula that guides the application of certain copyright exceptions, is properly viewed as a directive for legislatures to employ when they are formulating exceptions rather than a standard to be applied by the ordinary user. A commercial availability test (the requirement to check if a work is available on the market before an accessible format copy can be made) is strongly opposed by EIFL, the GCKG and other prominent analysts. For these negative amendments, we urged KECOBO to reinstate the provisions in the previous draft.