– Awo Aidam Amenyah is Child Online Africa’s founder and Executive Director. Child Online Africa a child and family focused charity working in Ghana and beyond through strategic partnerships. In this role, Awo leads a team of professionals and volunteers committed to influencing policies and changing practices in favour of child well-being keeping the child in Africa safe while they are online.
– Since 2013, Awo has been at the forefront of the call on government and other stakeholders to put in place measures safeguard children within the cyberspace and this call resulted in a revolution regarding Child Protection interventions in Ghana. The team’s work influenced the National Cyber Security Policy and Strategy in Ghana in 2015 and the Africa Union’s Agenda 2040 in 2018 to prioritize Child Online Protection.
– Prior to her current role, Awo has facilitated platforms for engagement between state and non-state actors to influence policy and development decisions specifically related to education, violence against girls, Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, Child Online Protection, among others. Before her current position she worked with the Education Coalition on an ActionAid-Big Lottery Fund project. The key milestone for the project is the draft Ghana Gender Education Policy.
– Awo is DQ World Training Partner, a member of the National Child Online Protection Steering Committee (Ghana) and Child Online Protection implementation partner for ITU, the International Telecommunication Union. She has been involved with the Recovery and Reintegration from CSE working group and National Association of Media Literacy Education. The passion to make things happen for the child in Africa compelled her to start the rallying call for Safer Internet Day celebrations in Ghana since 2015 evolving into Safer Internet Day Africa in 2019 which saw 12 other African countries participating. In her quest to sustain the continental level discussion and the anger of slow pace of action saw the saw her summiting successfully on Mt. Kilimanjaro (19341 Ft AMSL) in August as a social cause to raise awareness on Child Online Safety and Wellbeing in Africa

In this episode we talk with Awo about the challenges they face in rolling out internet access in Ghana, Africa.