Democratic Republic of the Congo
AI behavior law: bot and agent disclosure, crawler and training-data rules, automated-agent transactions, and algorithmic decision-making.
Summary
The DR Congo enacted Ordonnance-Loi n°23/010 du 13 mars 2023 (Digital Code), a comprehensive statute covering data protection (Title III), cybersecurity, electronic transactions, and cybercrime. The Digital Code criminalises fraudulent access to computer systems and fraudulent data extraction, following the Budapest Convention model. Personal data protection applies to any automated collection including from publicly available sources; sanctions range from 8 million to 200 million Congolese francs. The standalone data protection authority (APD) provided for in the Digital Code has not yet been formally established; a Ministerial Decree dated 17 August 2024 temporarily transferred its functions to ARPTIC (Autorité de Régulation des Postes, Télécommunications et Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication) pending a prime-ministerial decree. No EU-style sui generis database right. OAPI membership (Bangui Agreement) provides copyright over original compilations only. Enforcement capacity is nascent. No scraping case law identified.
Automated-access legality
Carried forward from the crawler-law index. Governs whether automated clients may access public websites in this jurisdiction.
| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Authorization test | security mechanism bypass |
| Public-page carve-out | unsettled |
| Terms-of-service browsewrap enforceable | notice dependent |
| Terms-of-service clickwrap enforceable | yes |
| Copyright exception model | fair dealing narrow |
| Text and data mining — commercial status | unsettled |
| Text and data mining — opt-out mechanism | none |
| robots.txt legal weight | non binding notice |
| AI training-specific law | none |
| Privacy regime | Ordonnance-Loi n°23/010 du 13 mars 2023 portant Code du numérique de la RDC (Titre III — protection des données personnelles); APD functions temporarily assigned to ARPTIC by Ministerial Decree 17 August 2024 pending formal APD establishment |
| Trespass to chattels | not recognized |
Last reviewed: 2026-05-24. Confidence: medium. Fast-moving area — verify before relying. Not legal advice.