Content licensing Kenya law requires every licence, distribution deal, and platform arrangement to be structured within the copyright framework established by the Copyright Act (Cap 130), which has shifted considerably in recent years as digital distribution and streaming have become the primary channels for rights exploitation. The Copyright Act (Cap 130) remains the governing statute, administered by the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO), but the collective management landscape it oversees looks materially different today from how it operated as recently as 2023, and a business relying on an outdated picture of who actually collects what risks paying the wrong body, or being told later that a payment made in good faith does not discharge its licensing obligation at all.

Content Licensing Kenya: Collective Management Organisations

Kenya’s content licensing relies heavily on collective management organisations (CMOs) authorised by KECOBO under Section 46 of the Copyright Act to collect royalties on behalf of rights holders and issue licences to users on a collective basis. For years the market operated on a three-CMO model: the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK) for authors and composers, the Kenya Association of Music Producers (KAMP) for producers, and the Performers Rights Society of Kenya (PRISK) for performers. That structure no longer reflects who is actually authorised to collect. Following a licensing dispute that ran through 2024 and 2025, KECOBO issued one-year licences effective 5 November 2025 to two CMOs only: the Performing and Audio-Visual Rights Society of Kenya (PAVRISK), the rebranded successor to PRISK, which now administers performing rights and audio-visual rights as a single multi-rights body, and KAMP Copyright and Related Rights, which administers the rights of producers of sound recordings. MCSK’s renewal application for the 2025-2026 period was unsuccessful, and the Copyright Tribunal and the High Court have since confirmed, in rulings through late 2025 and into 2026, that MCSK has no current authority to demand or collect licence fees, with a fuller hearing on the underlying dispute listed for July 2026. For a business that plays recorded music publicly, broadcasts content, or operates a venue, restaurant, or retail space, the practical consequence is concrete: a royalty demand issued under the MCSK name, or any joint name combining MCSK with PAVRISK or KAMP, is not a valid basis for payment, and KECOBO has stated publicly that issuing invoices under unauthorised joint systems is itself an offence. Before paying any CMO invoice, confirm the issuing body’s current licensing status directly against KECOBO’s published notices rather than relying on the name printed on the invoice or on what was true two years ago.

Content Licensing Kenya: Film and Audiovisual Rights

Film and audiovisual distribution agreements should specify the licensed territory, the distribution window across theatrical, streaming, broadcast, and home video release, the degree of exclusivity granted, the term, and the financial structure, whether a flat fee, a minimum guarantee against revenue share, or a pure revenue share. Section 30A of the Copyright Act gives performers and the makers of sound recordings a right to equitable remuneration where a sound recording or audiovisual work is used, which sits alongside, rather than replaces, whatever collective licence covers the underlying public performance. International co-production and distribution deals involving Kenyan parties also carry a tax dimension that is easy to overlook at the negotiation stage: royalties remitted to a non-resident counterparty attract withholding tax at 20 percent under the Income Tax Act, reduced where a double taxation agreement between Kenya and the recipient’s home jurisdiction sets a lower treaty rate. Settling the payment mechanics, and confirming which party bears the withholding tax cost, before signing rather than after the first payment falls due avoids a dispute over net versus gross figures partway through the relationship.

Publishing Rights

Authors negotiating publishing agreements should look closely at how reversion of rights is defined, since a publisher that lets a title go out of print without a clear reversion trigger can leave an author’s rights tied up indefinitely with no active exploitation taking place. Digital and electronic rights should be addressed specifically rather than assumed to fall under a general grant of publishing rights, since the scope of what a publisher is authorised to do across print, ebook, and audiobook formats is a matter of what the contract actually says, not what seems intuitive to either side. Royalty clauses should set a clear rate, a clear accounting period, and an audit right allowing the author, on reasonable notice, to inspect the records underlying a royalty statement, since a dispute over unpaid royalties is very difficult to resolve without one. Moral rights under the Copyright Act, including the right to be identified as author and the right to object to derogatory treatment of the work, exist independently of the economic rights assigned or licensed under the contract, and cannot be waived as cleanly as commercial terms can be negotiated away.

User-Generated Content and the Takedown Regime

Digital platforms hosting user-generated content face a structured framework rather than an open-ended liability question. The Copyright (Amendment) Act 2019 introduced Sections 35A to 35D of the Copyright Act, which give internet service providers, defined broadly enough to capture social media platforms and online hosting services, a conditional safe harbour from liability for infringing content posted by users. To rely on it, a platform must not initiate the transmission, must not interfere with the technology used to identify rights ownership, must not have actual knowledge that specific content is infringing, and must act on a valid takedown notice by disabling access within forty-eight business hours unless a compliant counter-notice is filed in time. In Multichoice Kenya Limited v Safaricom PLC & another; Kenya Copyright Board & another (Miscellaneous Civil Application E567 of 2019) [2022] KEHC 3256, the High Court examined a dispute over exactly this point: Multichoice had sent takedown notices covering 141 sites without specifying the precise location of the infringing content on each one, and the ISPs argued the notices were too vague to act on. The court held that the statutory safeguards protect an ISP that acts on a takedown notice from liability for a wrongful or malicious notice, but the corresponding burden is on the rights holder to identify the infringing content with the specificity Section 35B actually requires, not simply to name a domain and expect the ISP to investigate. A takedown notice itself has formal requirements under Section 35A, including identification of the specific rights infringed and an affidavit attesting to ownership and good faith, and filing a malicious or knowingly false takedown notice is a criminal offence in its own right. A platform’s standard operating procedure should set out, in writing, who receives takedown notices, how the forty-eight-hour clock is tracked internally, and how a counter-notice is evaluated, since the safe harbour is conditional on actually following the process, not on having a policy document that merely references it.

Content Licensing Kenya: Enforcement and Practical Compliance

Section 38 of the Copyright Act criminalises a range of conduct connected to infringement, including knowingly making, distributing, or importing infringing copies, manufacturing devices designed to circumvent technological protection measures, and removing or altering rights management information attached to a work. For a business operating in this space, whether as a content owner, a distributor, or a platform, the practical compliance priorities are confirming the current licensing status of any CMO before paying it, building IP assignment and licence-scope clauses into every content contract rather than assuming ownership follows automatically from payment, putting a documented takedown and counter-notice procedure in place if the business hosts third-party content, and accounting for non-resident withholding tax in any cross-border royalty arrangement from the outset rather than after the first invoice dispute. KECOBO is also currently consulting on a broader overhaul of the Act, following a Presidential Directive in August 2025 that directed the Board to work with the Kenya Law Reform Commission on modernising the framework, so a compliance review undertaken today should expect the underlying rules to keep moving rather than treat the current CMO landscape or the takedown regime as a fixed endpoint.

Clay & Associates Advocates advises content owners, distributors, and digital platforms on licensing structures, collective management compliance, and the takedown and safe harbour framework that applies to user-generated content. If your business needs to confirm which CMO is actually entitled to invoice it, structure a film or publishing deal, or put a defensible takedown procedure in place, we can help you work through it before a royalty dispute or an infringement claim forces the question.

Licensing content or managing rights in Kenya? Contact Clay & Associates Advocates for a content licensing and rights management strategy session. Book a Consultation

Related reading: Copyright Law in Kenya | Media and Broadcasting Law in Kenya | Data Protection for Media and Technology Companies

For tailored legal advice on this matter, speak with our communications and media legal services team at Clay & Associates Advocates. We advise businesses and individuals across Kenya on Communications and Media matters from our offices at Nextgen Mall, Nairobi.