The government of Tanzania in conjunction the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) as well as other stake holders are in the process of preparing law against cyber-crimes in the country which have never been in existence.

The team is striving to bring forth three bills of legislation which will provide the country with legitimate support for electronic financial transactions which will translate to new cybercrime laws and legislation.

“It is difficult to prosecute cyber-crimes because there is no law for that. We have no statutes to address the problems of criminal activities that take place over the Internet. The envisaged laws would also help to address legal issue in electronic financial transactions in Tanzania as currently there were no cyber-crime laws,” said George Sije from BoT Legal Counsel.

When the manage to come up with the cyber-crime laws, the Data Protection and Piracy Act will become the central piece of legislation, with the Computer and System Act, and Electronic Transaction Act to follow.

“This will be the main piece of legislation to govern personal data protection. Whenever you open a bank account, use ATMs, join a social networking website or book a flight online, you hand over vital personal information. Some crooks get unauthorised access to this kind of data, but we do not have the statutes to deal with them,” said Sije.

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