About SID Africa

SID is a landmark campaign delivered locally through a number of Safer Internet Centres (in Europe) and Safer Internet Day Committees (beyond Europe), and it is backed by the Better Internet for Kids line of work (coordinated by European Schoolnet on behalf of the European Commission).

In summary, countries outside of the Insafe network (EU member states plus Iceland, Norway, Russia) wishing to participate in Safer Internet Day are invited to set up a Safer Internet Day Committee, which should be backed by the support of at least one public authority or government organization. The committee should involve leading actors in the online safety arena (such as NGOs, industry, researchers), but there can only be one SID Committee per country. No financial support is provided by the European Commission.

Safer Internet Day (SID) 2019 celebrations will take place on Tuesday, 5 February 2019. The campaign’s slogan, “Together for a better internet”, is a call to action for all stakeholders to join together and play their part in creating a better internet for everyone, and especially for younger users.
Safer Internet Day Africa #SIDAfrica because this continent has its unique culture and context when it comes to the conversation around responsible use of ICTs. Therefore, it will be appropriate to design an awareness creation to reflect and suit the continent’s peculiar need.

In collaboration with the Office of the eSafety Commissioner and other stakeholders to celebrate 2019 under the theme ‘Together for a better Internet’. The call for African countries to join in the celebration is to encourage organizations in Africa working in the interest of children to encourage the responsible use of the Internet space. In partnership with the Australians to in developing the critical skills required for navigating the online world. These skills take time to develop but they can help us in all areas of life- online and off. They are called the 4Rs…: RESPECT! RESPONSIBILITY! REASONING! RESILIENCE! all these combined to address the theme: TOGETHER FOR A BETTER INTERNET.

Child online protection and safety is a shared responsibility. When a child is protected a whole family is protected therefore it is important that we are all safe, secure and protected online.

According to the Telecommunication Union’s measure of Information Society Report, 51% of the world’s population will be online by 2018 and 24% of the population of Africa will be online by the end of this year. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help accelerate progress towards every single one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Being online today is more than simply searching or moving from one site or another; people have moved away from that to making it a way of life. Nobody in the world is left out though not on the same measure of access, but key to the discussion is that, there is generally an access for anyone who wishes to get online. Learning and connecting through technology is now considered as very vital to one’s daily routine, which means the responsibility for being a good digital citizen takes on greater importance.

It also means educating ourselves about both the benefits and risks of the new environment we found ourselves which is the online world. Not only can we prioritize the benefit we derive from the online space, according to the Telecommunications Union (ITU)’s standards, we as users are expected to develop the habits which can help us stay safer there.