Ethiopia

Ethiopia has a comprehensive standalone data protection law. The Personal Data Protection Proclamation No. 1321/2024 was adopted on 4 April 2024 and entered into force on publication in the Federal Negarit Gazette in July 2024, Ethiopia's first comprehensive personal data protection framework. It establishes data-processing principles, lawful bases, and a structured set of data-subject rights, and is now recorded in ATLPF's Instruments database (AI-draft, pending human review). The Proclamation grants individuals rights to access, rectify, erase, and restrict the processing of their personal data and to object to direct marketing and automated decision-making. It imposes an unusually strict data-localisation requirement, personal data must be stored on a server or data centre located in Ethiopia, and provides for enforcement ranging from administrative fines to imprisonment for offences such as failure to notify breaches or inadequate security. The Ethiopian Communications Authority (ECA) is designated as the independent supervisory authority and is now recorded in ATLPF's Regulators database. Because the law and regulator are documented, Ethiopia is scored in line with other single-instrument jurisdictions that have a named supervisory authority, though enforcement is at an early stage and the underlying records are AI-drafted from a June 2026 verification search pending confirmation against the official Amharic text.