Executive Director of Child Online Africa, Awo Aidam Amenyah, has called on Africans to do the needful to ensure the digital rights of children and young people are protected.

She made this appeal as part of the Child Online Africa’s #Hike4TheChildOnline project which seeks to raise funds to support the organisation’s programmes in the area of online safety, literacy and well-being programmes across the regions in Africa.

Awo Amenyah has decided to climb mountain Kilimanjaro, the highest in Africa in a bid to “send the message across to all the people concerned in Africa to do the needful for children and young people”.

According to her, children and young people need the skills, knowledge and character to live in the digital age and that can be achieved if individuals, organizations and countries make the effort to give them what they need to be able to navigate the space correctly and appropriately.

“Many developed countries have made significant progress when it comes to children and young people’s safety on the Internet, though that has not made them immune to the challenges we see these days: at least it has made most people including us what really the issues are when it comes to the safety and protection of children and young people online. Same level of preparation cannot be said of the African continent. We have close to zero level of knowledge at some level for adults, you can imagine what children and young people will face then under the watch of such adults? The vulnerability is there for everyone but it is worse in the case of children.”

Awo Amenyah revealed that she chose to climb Kilimanjaro because “there could not have been any significant location to make this call to Africans than at the Uhuru Peak of Kilimanjaro which is the highest point of Africa”.

Persons interested in supporting this cause or any of Child online Africa’s projects, can find them on Facebook @ChildOnlineAfrica, Twitter: @COnlineAfrica, GoFundMe: Hike 4 The Child Online in Africa, alternatively you could email: support@childonlineafrica.org or hike4thechildonline@childonlineafrica.org.

Child online Africa (COA) is a child and family focused research and advocacy non-governmental organization working with/for children to influence policies and change practices which affects children and young people in Ghana and Africa.