10 months ago
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Cape Town-based social enterprise development platform, Impact Amplifier, in collaboration with Google’s charitable arm, Google.org, has introduced the African Online Safety Platform, to address online safety risks on the continent.
According to a statement on Thursday, the platform is intended to address the complexity of understanding what online safety issues were affecting different parts of Africa.
It will also address how to keep everyone and particularly young people safe online, how to teach online safety formally in schools and at home, funding opportunities for safety innovators, and how to get help if a crime or other violation has occurred.
Further, the platform provides a repository of research, education content, funding opportunities and ways to seek help if an online crime has occurred.
Impact Amplifier said the African internet safety ecosystem was hindered by several issues such as the lack of a central repository of all the online safety research that has been conducted on a broad spectrum of issues in Africa.
“It explains the absence of legal and social media platform support systems that are less complex and time-consuming; and underfunding of the needed interventions were issues.
“The AOSP has been built to address all these challenges. The platform provides a rich repository of research, education content, funding opportunities and ways to seek help if an online crime has occurred.”
Google South Africa Country Director, Dr Alistair Mokoena said, “We first partnered with Impact Amplifier in 2020 when we announced the initial fund.
“We have now launched version 2.0 to show that we remain committed to providing sustained and dedicated support to the online safety ecosystem in Africa, in order to ensure that vulnerable populations are protected from online harms and reap the benefits of the internet.
“We encourage the relevant parties to use this amazing new education and research resource and to apply to the fund,” Mokoena said.
Director at Impact Amplifier, Tanner Methvin said, “With over 570 million people having access to the internet in Africa, reflecting just under 47 per cent of the continent’s population, online safety concerns deserve utmost attention.”
He said the platform offers innovative approaches to addressing the complex safety issues the internet presents.
“These range from unique ways of combating mis- and disinformation, tracking of cyber criminals, supporting journalists targeted with hate speech and bullying, integrating online safety training into school curriculums, and much more,” he concluded.
