Gabon

National jurisdiction · as of 2026-09-04

Gabon fixes the digital age of majority at sixteen: ordonnance n°0011/PR/2026 du 26 février 2026 portant réglementation de l'usage des réseaux sociaux via les plateformes numériques en République Gabonaise, published in Journal Officiel n°110 du 8 avril 2026, prohibits creating an account or profile on any online communication service, social network, or digital platform for a minor under sixteen, and requires an operator to block or suspend posting, sharing, and social-interaction features for an account identified as belonging to a user under sixteen unless a parent's consent is formally registered.

The Haute Autorité de la Communication publishes a technical référentiel setting the minimum requirements a platform's age-verification system must meet, and audits platforms against it; operators had twelve months from the ordinance's publication to deploy an effective age-verification mechanism at registration. Pornographic content is separately barred to a minor under eighteen.

No adult-content age-verification statute, app-store age-verification requirement, or general age-appropriate design code exists outside this ordinance and the children's-data chapter of the personal-data law (loi n°025/2023). The ordinance was taken under Article 99 of the Constitution on the authority of Loi n°042/2025 du 18 décembre 2025, which authorised the President of the Republic to legislate by ordinance during the parliamentary intersession.

01

Instruments on record

Ordonnance n°0011/PR/2026, protection des mineurs sur les réseaux sociaux

In force

Ordonnance n°0011/PR/2026 art. 14, 16-24 et 53 (protection des mineurs), du 26 février 2026 portant réglementation de l'usage des réseaux sociaux

Effective 2026-04-08 · Applies to private

Ordonnance n°0011/PR/2026 sets Gabon's digital age of majority at sixteen and prohibits creating an account or profile on any online communication service, social network, or digital platform for a minor under that age, with a narrow carve-out for online encyclopedias, educational, cultural, or scientific directories, free and open-source software development and sharing platforms, and pedagogical content consulted at school with a teacher's supervision and the parent's express consent.

The person holding parental authority is liable for what a minor under sixteen does on a social network or platform in their charge, and that person may have data about the minor erased.

Pornographic content is barred to a minor under eighteen, and the Haute Autorité de la Communication publishes and enforces a technical référentiel setting the minimum requirements an age-verification system must meet, entrusting technical audits of those systems to itself or to the Autorité de Régulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) or another independent body with proven expertise.

Within twelve months of the ordinance's publication, every social-network or digital-platform editor must deploy an effective technical mechanism to verify a user's age at registration.

The editor must block or suspend posting, sharing, and social-interaction features for an account identified as belonging to a user under sixteen unless parental consent is formally registered, disable by default any feature letting an unidentified person contact a minor's account directly, filter out algorithmic recommendation of AI-generated violent, sexual, or psychologically harmful content to accounts identified as minors, and report quarterly on the number of minor accounts detected, blocked, or removed and the verification methods used.

A user's own false declaration of age does not relieve the platform of this duty of reasonable vigilance. An editor must also acknowledge a cyberbullying report or a report of harmful content involving a minor within twenty-four hours and decide and notify the user within seventy-two hours.

Age threshold16
Verification methodsself declaration, parental consent
Enforcement bodyHaute Autorité de la Communication (HAC); technical audits also confided to the Autorité de Régulation des Communications Electroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) or another independent body

Source: Full text of law