Law No. 2013-450 on the Protection of Personal Data, enforcement and the Protection Body

Loi n° 2013-450, arts. 45-52 (enforcement and the Protection Body)

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What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.

In force.

An enforcement supervision rule binding public and private bodies.

As of 19 September 2026.

What it requires

Respond to ARTCI's declarations, authorization requests, claims, complaints and audits, and comply with a warning or formal notice it issues within the time it sets.
Do not invoke professional secrecy against the Protection Body, whether you are a cryptologic service provider or the person responsible for the processing.
Comply with an order interrupting a processing, locking data, or prohibiting a processing temporarily or permanently once the Protection Body issues it after an adversarial procedure.
Expect a financial penalty proportionate to the breach and the benefit derived from it, capped at 10 million CFA francs for a first failure and rising, for a repeated failure within five years, to 100 million CFA francs or, for a company, to 5 percent of the prior financial year's turnover excluding tax up to a maximum of 500 million CFA francs.
Do not oppose the Protection Body's members or authorized agents, refuse or conceal information or documents they request, or supply information inconsistent with your own records.

If you get it wrong

Criminal exposureYes

Criminal exposure note

Processing sensitive-category data without an article 21 exemption is punishable by ten to twenty years' imprisonment and a fine of 20 million to 40 million CFA francs (art. 21); unsolicited electronic direct marketing without consent is punishable by one to five years' imprisonment and a fine of 1 million to 10 million CFA francs (art. 22); obstructing the Protection Body is punishable by one month to two years' imprisonment and a fine of 1 million to 10 million CFA francs (art. 45).

Penalty structure

Article 51's administrative and pecuniary penalty for a first breach, without prejudice to any criminal penalty. On a repeated failure within five years the ceiling rises to 100 million CFA francs, or for a company to 5 percent of the prior year's turnover excluding tax up to a maximum of 500 million CFA francs.

Rule: Fixed only
As of: 19 September 2026
Currency: XOF
Fixed cap: 10,000,000

Who enforces it

Enforcement body

Autorité de Régulation des Télécommunications/TIC de Côte d'Ivoire (ARTCI), acting as the Autorité de Protection des données à caractère personnel

What it reaches

Obligation class

Governance, Reporting

What this law does

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

Article 46 entrusts the mission of personal-data Protection Body to ARTCI, the independent administrative body regulating telecommunications and information and communication technologies, and article 47 gives it the power to receive declarations and grant or withdraw authorizations, receive and resolve claims and complaints, audit any processing through sworn officers, impose administrative and pecuniary penalties, maintain a public directory of processing, authorize cross-border transfers, and issue guidelines for the processing and protection of personal data.

Article 48 bars a cryptologic service provider or a person responsible for processing from invoking professional secrecy against the Protection Body. Article 49 lets the Protection Body issue a warning or a formal notice to stop a deficiency within a set time, and article 50 lets it, after an adversarial procedure, order the interruption of a processing, the locking of some of the data, or a temporary or permanent prohibition where a processing violates human freedoms.

Article 51 lets the Protection Body, after hearing the person responsible or their subcontractor, withdraw an authorization temporarily or finally or impose a financial penalty proportionate to the seriousness of the breach and the benefit derived from it, capped at 10 million CFA francs for a first failure and, for a repeated failure within five years, at 100 million CFA francs or, for a company, 5 percent of the prior financial year's turnover excluding tax up to a maximum of 500 million CFA francs, without prejudice to any criminal penalty.

Article 45 punishes obstructing the Protection Body, by opposing its members' tasks, refusing or concealing information or documents it requests, or supplying inconsistent information, with imprisonment of one month to two years and a fine of 1 million to 10 million CFA francs, and requires the prosecutor or investigating judge to be told without delay of any such obstruction.

When LexLint raises it

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Read the law

Official English-language rendering of Law No. 2013-450 published by ARTCI
(Autorité de Régulation des Télécommunications/TIC de Côte d'Ivoire) the French original circulated on ARTCI's own site is a scanned-image PDF with no extractable text layer, so this rendering, whose translation quality is uneven in places, is the readable copy of the Act, an Internet Archive capture

archived copy

Read from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived February 18, 2026. Publisher's page: https://www.artci.ci/images/stories/pdf-english/lois_english/loi_2013_450_english.pdf

Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.

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