Deal sheet
- Status
- Statutory revenue split in force since 2022; enforcement litigation live. Leave granted 8 May 2025 with a stay on remittance to premium rate service providers. Substantive judgment 14 August 2025 not published on Kenya Law. Extension application dismissed with costs 5 March 2026, court functus officio. No party has published its own announcement of compliance.
- Type
- Licensing
- Parties
- Safaricom PLC, Airtel Kenya, Kenya Copyright Board, Music Copyright Society of Kenya
- Amount
- Not disclosed Not disclosed
- Rights covered
- Not an assignment or a sale. A statutory allocation of net revenue from ring back tune exploitation of sound recordings and musical works in Kenya, plus a statutory direct payment duty on the operator. Section 30C(1) of the Copyright Act Cap 130: premium rate service provider 8.5 per cent, telecommunication operator 39.5 per cent, artiste or owner of the copyright not less than 52 per cent, all of net revenue after taxes. Section 30C(3): the telecommunication operator shall remit directly to the artiste or owner of the copyright. Section 30C(2) preserves contracts between premium rate service providers and rightsholders that existed before commencement, until their expiry. Underlying copyright ownership is not altered by section 30C. No master rights, publishing rights or administration rights change hands under this provision.
- Territory
- Kenya. Section 30C is a provision of Kenyan statute and binds telecommunication operators licensed in Kenya. The two operators before the court are Safaricom and Airtel Kenya.
- Announced
- 2026-03-05
- Primary document
- Regulatory filing
- Sources
- High Court of Kenya at Nairobi (Milimani), Judicial Review Miscellaneous Application E274 of 2024, [2026] KEHC 2915 (KLR), Chigiti J, ruling of 5 March 2026, published by the National Council for Law Reporting. Order: the application dismissed with costs. · Copyright Act Cap 130, consolidation to 31 December 2022, section 30C Payment of ring back tune revenue, in the words of the statute, with the amending note [Act No. 14 of 2022, s. 3] · Ngemu & another v Kenya Copyright Board & 2 others; Safaricom Ltd & another (Interested Parties) [2025] KEHC 5758 (KLR), 8 May 2025: leave granted for mandamus to enforce section 30C(1) and 30C(3), leave operating as a stay on remittance to premium rate service providers · Music Copyright Society of Kenya v Safaricom Limited & 3 others; Xpedia Management Limited & 3 others (Interested Parties); Kenya Copyright Board (Intended Amicus Curiae) [2024] KEHC 4817 (KLR), 8 May 2024: records that the Board's brief supported the position that premium rate service providers and copyright owners are free to contract with each other and that collecting societies have no exclusive right to receive and distribute royalties, and that the society's licence had not been reinstated since 2020 · Omare v Safaricom Limited & another; Music Copyright Society Kenya (Third party) [2024] KEHC 875 (KLR), 31 January 2024: names the Content Provision Agreement between the operator and the content service provider, and traces the chain from artist to collecting society by deed of assignment to licence to the aggregator to the operator · Muta v Safaricom Limited; Liberty Africa Technologies Limited (Third party) [2023] KEHC 19792 (KLR), 23 June 2023: the operator's legal officer admitted in cross-examination that the operator did not pay money directly to the artist and gave no breakdown of amounts paid on her behalf · Safaricom newsroom on Skiza: the operator's own account of the service launched in 2009, of contracting premium rate service providers on terms that the content providers obtain all rights when giving content to the telco, and of the artists' share rising to 30 per cent in 2017
Read this before citing: This record rests on published court documents and on the statute itself, not on any commercial agreement. The contracts that actually move the money, the Content Provision Agreements between the operators and the content service providers, and the deeds of assignment between artists and collecting societies or content service providers, are not public and this desk has not read them. Their existence and general structure are established only from what judgments record about them. The substantive judgment of 14 August 2025 is not published on Kenya Law: searches by party name and by case number E274 of 2024 did not return it, so its directives 4 and 5 are cited only as quoted verbatim inside the 5 March 2026 ruling, and the rest of that judgment has not been read. The statements about the Kenya Copyright Board failing to build the data bank, about over 8,000 artists being stranded, and about Safaricom demanding personal data and registration certificates, are the applicants case as recorded by the court, not findings of the court: the ruling was decided on locus standi and functus officio and made no finding on them. Safaricom is listed in the case title as 1st Interested Party but is referred to as 2nd Respondent in the applicants own affidavit as reproduced at paragraphs 3 and 6 of the ruling: the record is inconsistent on its designation. The ex parte applicant is named Saul Esikuri in the 2025 ruling and Sauk Esikuri in the 2026 ruling. No amount is stated: section 30C sets percentages, not sums, and no party has disclosed the value of Kenyan ring back tune revenue in any document read for this record. The Kenya Intellectual Property Bill 2026 matched a ring back tune search on Kenya Law but its PDF could not be text extracted on this server, so no claim is made about its contents.
Kenya’s Copyright Act, Cap 130, section 30C, inserted by the Copyright (Amendment) Act No. 14 of 2022, fixes the division of net ring back tune revenue by statute: the premium rate service provider takes 8.5 per cent, the telecommunication operator takes 39.5 per cent, and the artiste or owner of the copyright takes not less than 52 per cent. Section 30C(3) requires the operator to remit the artist’s share directly to the artist or copyright owner.
Two artists, Justus Ngemu and a second applicant, brought judicial review proceedings (E274 of 2024) at the High Court at Nairobi to compel enforcement of section 30C(1) and 30C(3) against the Kenya Copyright Board, the Cabinet Secretary for Gender, Culture, Arts and Heritage, the Attorney General, and the two operators named as interested parties, Safaricom and Airtel Kenya. On 8 May 2025 Chigiti J granted leave, and ordered that the leave operate as a stay on the two operators remitting ring back tune net revenue share to premium rate service providers.
The substantive judgment of 14 August 2025 is not published on Kenya Law. Its directives 4 and 5 are quoted verbatim in the later ruling: the Kenya Copyright Board was directed to develop and maintain an effective data bank of all artists and their works within six months, and in the intervening period the revenue payable to artists was to continue being paid in the form that subsisted before the suit was filed.
On 5 March 2026 the same judge dismissed with costs an application by eleven artist interested parties to extend that six month period. The court held itself functus officio. On the face of the ruling the data bank had not been built, the applicants stated that over 8,000 artists were stranded, and they stated that Safaricom had circulated a template demanding artists’ personal data and copyright registration certificates the Board had not issued, with payments to be withheld from 31 January 2026 in default. Safaricom’s recorded position is that it is still compliant with the law, is actively looking to comply, and continues to pay out the ring back tune net revenue share while awaiting the Board’s data bank.
The practical effect is that the statutory direct payment obligation in section 30C(3) is not in force as a payment practice. Money continues to move along the pre existing contractual chain documented in earlier judgments: artist to a collective management organisation or content service provider by deed of assignment, then by licence to an aggregator such as Liberty Afrika Technologies Limited, then to the operator under a Content Provision Agreement.
