Central African Republic

Article 111 opens by defining pornography as a complaisant representation of subjects in a literary, artistic, or cinematographic work that offends against good morals, and then makes it an offence for anyone to be guilty of pornographic acts with respect to children, punishable by two to five years' imprisonment and a fine, doubled on repeat conduct.

Because the article defines the underlying concept of pornography by reference to a representation in a work rather than by reference to conduct against a real child, its wording does not on its face exclude a virtual, drawn, or computer-generated depiction of a child from the offence, so a service generating that kind of synthetic content plausibly falls within the ban; no Central African appellate decision construing the point has been located, so this is a reading of the text rather than a settled interpretation.

The Code has no separate provision addressing AI-generated content, algorithmic transparency, or synthetic-media labelling.

Loi n° 24.001 applies to processing of personal data carried out by an establishment in the Central African Republic or by a processor there, whatever the technology, and to processing that produces effects in the country even where the controller is located abroad, subject to carve-outs for purely personal or domestic use and for the temporary, intermediate technical copies an access provider makes to route traffic.

The Act sets fair-processing, purpose-limitation, accuracy, proportionality, security, and retention principles, requires a lawful basis such as consent, contract necessity, a legal obligation, a legitimate interest, or a vital or public-interest ground before personal data is processed, and bars processing sensitive categories, defined to include racial origin, biometric and genetic data, health data, and political, religious, or trade-union information, except on narrow derogations such as the data subject's express consent or a public-interest research purpose.

A minor's data may be processed only with the authorisation of a holder of parental responsibility. Direct marketing by phone, fax, SMS, email, instant message, or social network requires the recipient's prior consent, and the recipient must be able to unsubscribe or change their preferences at any time.

A person may access their own data, object to its use for prospecting without justification, and obtain, when a decision producing legal effects for them rests on automated processing, information letting them understand and contest that mechanism. Every controller must designate a data-protection officer who keeps the processing register, reviews new processing before it starts, liaises with the supervisory agency, and handles data-subject requests.

A transfer of personal data outside the country needs either an adequacy-level destination or one of the Act's specific derogations (informed consent, contract necessity, an important public interest, a legal claim, or a public register), with a lighter regime for transfers to another CEMAC or CEEAC member state and prior notice to the agency for transfers elsewhere.

Breach of the Act draws an administrative sanction (warning, order to stop processing, pecuniary sanction capped at 5 percent of the controller's turnover, or withdrawal of an authorisation, doubled on repeat conduct) from the data-protection agency, and separate criminal penalties, ranging from six months to five years' imprisonment and a fine of FCFA 100,000 to FCFA 10,000,000 depending on the offence, doubled on repeat conduct, for conduct including obstructing the agency, negligent processing without required formalities, fraudulent collection, misusing a file's declared purpose, processing despite a valid objection, unlawful retention, or a disclosure that harms a person's standing or privacy.

No source confirms whether the dedicated supervisory agency has been formally constituted. The law states that it takes effect from its date of promulgation, but no legible day for that promulgation appears in the archived text.

The Central African Republic is a member state of the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI), and the Bangui Agreement as revised on February 24, 1999 states that it and its annexes apply in their entirety to every State that ratifies or accedes to it, so its Annex VII copyright regime governs literary and artistic property in the Central African Republic directly, without need of separate domestic transposition.

Article 16 of Annex VII permits, without the author's consent and without payment, reproducing in the press, broadcasting, or communicating to the public an economic, political, or religious article already published in a newspaper or periodical, provided the source and author are credited, unless the right of reproduction has been expressly reserved; the same article separately permits reporting on current events and reproducing political speeches and public addresses for informational purposes.

Annex VII creates no press-publisher neighbouring right, no compelled platform-to-publisher bargaining regime, no hot-news or misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright, and no machine-readable text-and-data-mining opt-out; it also predates any Central African case law testing whether the press exception reaches a systematic aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets, as opposed to a traditional press review.