Mauritius is the first country in the southern hemisphere to
have recently revamped its data protection legal regime by
repealing the previous Data Protection Act 2004 ("DPA
2004") and adopting a new law, namely the Data
Protection Act 2017 ("DPA 2017")
following the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation
(Regulation (EU) 2016/679) ("GDPR") in
the European Union.
The DPA 2004 was largely based on the EU Directive 95/46/EC on
the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of
personal data and free movement of such data, and was supplemented
by the Data Protection Regulations 2009.
The DPA 2017 came into force on 15 January 2018. It aims at
strengthening the control and personal autonomy of individuals over
their personal data in line with current relevant international
standards, namely the GDPR. The reform brought to the legal regime
of data protection in Mauritius was also made in an effort to
simplify an area of law that is sometimes
