NAIROBI, KENYA, May 30 -- In 2025, EssilorLuxottica and Meta sold more than seven million Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses, tripling their sales from the previous two years and making the category a mainstream product for the first time.

The technology has gone mainstream faster than public awareness, regulation or governance, and, despite the fact that East Africa remains an underrepresented market for this technology, it has been placed at the centre of a growing controversy that has no legal or constitutional precedent.

Early 2026, a Russian vlogger identified by Kenyan and Ghanian authorities as Vladislav Luilkov travelled through Kenya and Ghana wearing the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, recording intimate encounters with women withou...