Impact Amplifier, a South African-based social enterprise development agency, and Google.org, a charitable arm of Google, have partnered to tackle online safety risks in Africa through its online safety platform.
The platform plans to address the difficulty in understanding the online safety issues that are affecting different parts of Africa, according to a statement on Thursday.
“The platform 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 issued,” the statement said.
It said the platform also provides a repository of research, education content, funding opportunities, and ways to seek help if an online crime has occurred.
Impact Amplifier noted that 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.
“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,” it said.
Alistair Mokoena, country director of Google South Africa, 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.”
Tanner Methvin, director at Impact Amplifier, said: “With over 570 million people having access to the internet in Africa, reflecting just under 47 percent of the continent’s population, online safety concerns deserve the utmost attention.”
He said the platform offers innovative approaches to addressing the complex safety issues the internet presents.
