The Effect of Africa’s Adoption of the EU Notion of Personal Data: the Case of Examination Results

Abstract

European personal data protection standards as set by the Data Protection Directive and recently the General Data Protection Regulation have and are still steadily being adopted by other jurisdictions, including Africa. Under these standards, examination results could well be interpreted to mean personal data, which could also apply in Africa. This paper contends that a similar interpretation of examination results as personal data on African soil could be welcome in terms of promoting general information privacy, but also introduces some rights and obligations which could be too impractical to guarantee. The paper concludes by suggesting that African lawmakers should initiate and engage relevant discussions to come up with appropriate norms which simultaneously protect the privacy of examination results while ensuring that their processing does not drag along a bunch of unfeasible rights and obligations which could only hinder the smooth organisation of public examinations or processing of examination results.