By Ivy Gikonyo
In recent weeks, public attention in both Ghana and Kenya has been captured by disturbing allegations of a foreign national secretly recording intimate encounters with women and circulating those videos online. What might have been private, fleeting moments between consenting adults were transformed into viral spectacles without the knowledge or permission of the women involved.
Before anything else, it is important to draw a clear moral line. Choosing to spend time with someone, even in an intimate setting, does not cancel out one’s rights. Adults are allowed to make personal decisions (wise or unwise). None of those choices amount to consenting to be filmed in secret. None of them translate into permission to have one’s image and vulnerability distributed to strangers across messaging apps and social media feeds.
When intimate images are shared without consent, the harm does not end with the upload. It spreads. Families find out. Employers see links forwarded in WhatsApp groups. Friends whisper. Strangers screenshot. The internet does not forget, and the women at the centre of these videos must live with the knowledge that what they believed to be private moments have been converted into permanent digital artefacts. The emotional toll is real and often devastating. And in societies where women are still judged more harshly for sexual expression, the burden falls disproportionately on them, not on the person who weaponised the camera.
Both Ghana and Kenya have legal tools that recognise these harms. In Kenya, constitutional protections of privacy and dignity are reinforced by legislation such as the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act 2018 (amended 2025) and the Data Protection Act, 2019, which can be used to address unauthorised recording and distribution of personal data, including intimate content. In Ghana, the Cybersecurity Act, 2020 criminalises the non-consensual publication of intimate images and provides a framework for investigating cyber-enabled abuse. Thus, on paper, it is quite clear that privacy does not evaporate because technology makes exposure easy. But the existence of laws does not automatically translate into safety or dignity. Victims often hesitate to report such violations because doing so can mean reliving the experience in police stations and courtrooms, facing public scrutiny, or being blamed for ‘putting themselves in that situation’. Enforcement can also be slow, particularly when cross-border elements are involved. Meanwhile, the videos continue to circulate.
Genuine safety and dignity online in contexts like this require more than prosecution after the damage is done. They demand a cultural shift in how we understand consent in the digital age. Consent must be specific and informed. Agreeing to intimacy is one thing. Agreeing to recording is another thing. Agreeing to distribution is a whole other thing. Each step requires explicit permission. Without it, what we are dealing with is abuse. Platforms, too, must act with urgency. Rapid takedown mechanisms and stronger detection of non-consensual intimate content are essential. The burden should not rest entirely on victims to chase links across the internet. At the same time, digital literacy efforts must make it clear that recording someone without consent is not funny. It is a violation of their fundamental rights.
Most importantly, public discourse must resist the reflex to scrutinise the women’s behaviour. When we focus on why they visited, or whether they trusted too quickly, we shift attention away from the core issue, which is that someone chose to exploit their trust and broadcast their private lives for personal gain. The wrong lies there.
This moment should push us to broaden how we talk about digital rights in Africa. Freedom of expression and access to information are vital, but so is the right to control one’s own image. A rights-based digital future for Ghana and Kenya, and the continent at large must beyond protecting our voices online, also consider our vulnerability both online and offline.