Safaricom (NSE: SCOM) today hosted the annual Safer Internet Day to advocate for the responsible use of the internet at an event held at the Michael Joseph Centre, Safaricom House.
The event that aims to promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially among children and young people across the world is themed: Together for a better Internet.
Safaricom is a major player in Kenya’s internet landscape, providing over 86% of Kenya’s population with 4G and 3G coverage and providing 2G coverage to 96% of Kenyans.
“We see the company’s future as data-driven, agile, efficient and adaptive. For this to be realized, we have to protect our children from the ills of the Internet while also making sure they get the most out of it in terms of learning and entertainment. With our aim being to transform lives, we want everybody to be able to log on and learn their crafts, create and share content and advance their education without being in danger of viewing explicit content or being bullied,” said Stephen Chege, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer – Safaricom.
“With the kind of reach we have, it is important to us that we tell as many individuals as possible to create a better internet by developing four critical skills: Respect, Responsibility, Reasoning and Resilience – we call these the 4Rs,” said Mr. Chege.
In November 2018, the Telco signed the Kenya Child Online Protection Industry Charter, together with GSMA and other Mobile Network Operators to signal a commitment to focus on Child Online Protection.
In addition, Safaricom has a child online safety policy in place that provides guidelines when developing products and services to ensure they are sensitive to the safety of children. The company has also partnered with Internet Watch Foundation to block illegal child sexual content from the Safaricom network.
Over the years, Safer Internet Day (SID) has become a landmark event in the online safety calendar. It started as an initiative of the European Union SafeBorders project in 2004 and has today grown to be celebrated in close to 130 countries.
Safaricom invested KES 17 billion on network roll-out and acceleration of broadband and fibre deployment in the first half of the year ending 31st March 2019. Such investments have enabled the company provide free connectivity and internet to public primary schools, giving more young learners across the country supervised access to the internet