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Child Online Protection Pilot Program in Ethiopia

As in other parts of the world, children and young people across Africa increasingly inhabit the online environment. In Africa, the mobile subscription alone is estimated to be at half a billion in 2012. As the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) continues to grow in the African Union, young citizens enjoy greater opportunities for creativity, participation, and engagement with the world around them. However, changing technologies and social behaviours introduce new risks to young people.

Background

In order to enable young citizens in Africa to fully take advantage of rich opportunities offered by new technologies, measures promoting their safer use are needed. Measures should also be adopted at all levels in order to protect the physical, mental and moral integrity of children, which might be impaired by their exposure to inappropriate content.

ITU in collaboration with ACOPEA and Facebook launched E-safety pilot program in July 2013 to promote child online safety in Africa as part of its Child Online Protection (COP) initiative. This tripartite partnership implemented a six-month pan-African e-safety education and awareness program in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with a view to replicate this in other parts of Africa.

The pilot raised awareness, educated and engaged regional and national stakeholders in Ethiopia at all levels—government agencies, industry, educators, civil society, and young people themselves—to work together towards a safe and empowering environment for young Internet users in the region.

Outputs

Online safety ambassadors (Target is 50 professionals):
The following human resources have been produced through Workshops programmes directly by the pilot.

Safety Ambassadors	Total	Remarks
Teachers	25	Educators From 25 schools
Law enforcement	127	Federal police
Other stakeholders	5	INSA, MCIT
Total	157

Education awareness material:
The following online safety awareness resources were adopted from CEOP UK, contextualised under the banner ThinkUKnow (TUK) deck of slide presentation for target audiences and other materials have been produced directly by the pilot:

SI No.

Type/Title

Content

Comment

For safety Ambassadors

TUK Full day workshop

Eng.

Electronic and print copy

For parents

TUK half day

Eng.

Electronic and print copy

For children and young people

In school activities

Eng.

Electronic and print copy

Brochure

Help us empower the future digital citizens in Africa

Eng.

Electronic and print copy

Leaflets

General information on COP

Eng.

Eng.	Electronic and print copy

Banners with safety messages

Click Safe Click Clever

Eng.

Disseminated across schools

Posters with sponsor logos

Empowering digital citizens in Africa

Eng.

Electronic and print copy

Online safety questionnaire

Student survey

Eng.

Electronic and print copy

Strategy
Target Groups
Implementation Stage

The corresponding working Strategies broadly constituted awareness meetings with decision makers, workshops and networking.

Target groups of the pilot were, regional decision makers at the African Union (AU), Ethiopian government agencies, industry, educators, civil society, and young people.

Series of three separate workshops on child online protection took place: for 25 teachers, 17 law enforcement agency staff and other stakeholders with a participation total of 47 professionals.

Participatory and experiential methodologies were used, such as case study, lecture & questions and answers. Apart from PPT presentation teaching aids such as flip charts, handouts, poster were distributed among the participants as effective learning tools.

Objectives

Project objectives:
Increase the understanding of child online safety among government, industry, educators and civil society organizations
Raise awareness, share knowledge and experience through workshops and training with out the need to reinvent the wheel.
Harness networks of governments, industry and educators to promote child online safety.
Assess the national child online safety framework in Ethiopia
Immediate objectives:

To sensitize and cascade awareness through train the trainer model producing up to 50 local online safety Ambassadors
To reach out to educators from 25 schools in Addis Ababa, produce and communicate spot safety messages with children and young people in in these schools.
Assess the national COP posture in Ethiopia, through ITU/COP survey

Major Activities

Stakeholder group, discussion and several individual meetings were held to share the idea of the E-safety pilot with the following: Ministry of Education, MCIT, Information Network Security Agency (INSA), Federal Police commission, Ministry of woman and youth Affairs, Ethio Telecom, ZTE, African Development Bank, Ethiopian airlines.

The Pilot coordinator held various meetings with the above mentioned to discuss the initiative and seek their cooperation in the implementation of the project. Findings/outcome from these meetings and discussion held with the stakeholders were used as a base line for the pilot activities.

The Major findings are:

Overall knowledge of COP and online safety issues among the stakeholders was very low.
The pilot was seen as an opportunity and a good start in bridging the knowledge gap about the issues in COP in Ethiopia and Africa.
It was also noted that it is important to encourage children and parents to get online and get safe at the same time, therefore messages have to be appropriate for the target audiences.
Young users can be good promoters of a message and through educating them we can often reach the parents as well. The earlier the education starts, the stronger the effects on users' Internet behaviour.
The methods and manner of conducting any awareness building should be carefully designed and structured to take into account, the sentiments and sensitivities of the target groups concerned. Message, mode of delivery, training materials should all be prepared to ensure effective learning and internalization of knowledge on child online safety.
All of them agreed this is a timely pilot for Ethiopia and Africa, assured to extend their hand of cooperation and to actively participate in the pilot activity.