'They Used My Face Without Permission': Nairobi Residents Speak Out on Duplicate Image Theft

A woman from Korogocho found her portrait — taken during a 2023 water project visit — repurposed on at least three separate donor websites and one county government banner outside Pangani offices on Juja Road. She had signed nothing. She received nothing. And until a neighbour flagged the banner in April this year, she had no idea it was happening.

Duplicate image replacement — the practice of lifting photographs of real people from one source and deploying them across unrelated platforms, campaigns or publications — has become a low-grade but persistent grievance in Nairobi's informal settlements. It sits at the intersection of digital rights, community dignity and the broader accountability deficit that drove much of the Gen Z protest energy in 2024 and 2025. With smartphone penetration rising sharply and platforms like WhatsApp and TikTok making it trivially easy to screenshot and redistribute images, the scale of the problem has grown faster than any regulatory response.

A Problem With Deep Roots in Nairobi's Aid Economy

Nairobi hosts the African headquarters of dozens of international non-governmental organisations, many of them clustered along Westlands Road and in the Upper Hill precinct. Community photography has long been a fundraising staple: images of residents from Mukuru kwa Njenga, Mathare North or Kibera's Soweto village appear in annual reports, grant applications and social media feeds. The consent frameworks governing this use have historically been thin — a signature on a form many residents cannot read, or verbal permission obtained through a community liaison who may not have fully explained what was being authorised.

The Korogocho woman's experience is not isolated. Residents of Mukuru Kwa Reuben, speaking to community radio station Ghetto Radio FM — which has been running a listener call-in series on digital rights since May 2026 — described similar discoveries: a child's face on a malnutrition awareness poster circulating in Europe, a group photograph from a 2022 upgrading project appearing on a private construction company's Nairobi website as a community engagement credential.

Kenya's Data Protection Act, passed in 2019 and operationalised through the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, does provide for the protection of personal data including photographs. The ODPC has received a rising volume of complaints since 2024, though processing backlogs remain a challenge for ordinary residents seeking redress. Filing a formal complaint requires navigating an online portal — a significant barrier in settlements where reliable internet access often means a shared device at a cyber café on Jogoo Road or River Road, costing between Ksh 20 and Ksh 50 per session.

What Communities Are Doing — and What Needs to Change

Grassroots responses are emerging. Muungano wa Wanavijiji, the federation of slum dwellers that has been active in informal settlement upgrading across Nairobi since the 1990s, has begun incorporating image consent sessions into its community mapping exercises in Huruma and Mathare. The sessions explain in plain Kiswahili and Sheng what a photograph can be used for, how long it can be kept, and what rights a person retains after it is taken.

Separately, the Nairobi Metropolitan Services, which oversees several community development programmes under the county and national government structures, has not yet published a formal photography and consent policy for its field operations, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Nairobi. Several ward administrators contacted for this article did not respond by press time.

For residents navigating this now, digital rights advocates recommend three practical steps: first, request a written copy of any consent form in a language you understand before any photography session; second, lodge a complaint directly with the ODPC at its Nairobi offices on Upper Hill's Ragati Road if an image has been used without permission; and third, document the offending use with a screenshot or photograph of the material, noting the date and platform. Complaints submitted with evidence are processed faster, according to the ODPC's published guidance from February 2026.

The woman from Korogocho has not yet filed a formal complaint. She said she plans to. The banner outside Pangani offices, as of late June, was still up.