Online safety & content laws in Mozambique (2026)

The Assembly of the Republic passed both a Cybersecurity Law and a Cybercrime Law in April 2026, establishing criminal provisions and procedural rules for electronic evidence, mechanisms for international cooperation, and requirements for protecting critical information infrastructure; 36,330 cyberattacks were recorded in the first half of 2025 alone, motivating the legislation.

Decree 59/2023 (27 October 2023, amended by Decree 44/2025) requires intermediary electronic service providers and digital platform operators to register with authorities and comply with standardised cybersecurity, data-integrity, systems-operations, and network-security measures; it does not impose DSA-style content-moderation obligations or platform liability rules.

Decree 48/2025 (December 2025) introduced a Telecommunications Traffic Control Regulation to enhance national security, guard against cyberattacks and AI-driven fraud, and protect public and financial services infrastructure at the network level.

A draft Personal Data Protection Bill, aligned with the African Union Convention on Cybersecurity and Personal Data Protection, was put to public consultation in September 2025 and was undergoing inter-ministerial harmonisation before planned submission to the Council of Ministers and Assembly of the Republic; no law is yet in force.

Following disputed October 2024 presidential elections, authorities disrupted mobile internet and blocked Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube for several weeks; Human Rights Watch and Access Now condemned the measures as violations of freedom of expression and access to information, noting it was the second shutdown in under a year.

Mozambique has no dedicated age-verification law and no platform content-moderation obligations comparable to the EU Digital Services Act or UK Online Safety Act; the Electronic Transactions Law (Law 3/2017) provides the foundational e-commerce and electronic-signature framework underpinning the broader digital-law stack.