Day 3:  Connecting all people and promoting cyber hygiene and emerging issues including youth, online work, inclusion and regulation.

Observed:  for the youthful population, what is their degree of awareness on existing regulations, as they engage online are they aware of how to enhance their privacy? On inclusion, is there existing data on persons with disabilities and their general consumption of the internet? 

Noted: especially for children, the Ministry of Public Service, Gender, Senior Citizens Affairs and Special Programmes developed a national plan of action to tackle online child sexual exploitation and abuse. The plan is grounded in the ‘We Protect Model National Response’ and has five key areas — law, policy leadership and coordination, prevention, capacity strengthening, response and support services, and monitoring and evaluating progress. 

Emphasized: 12 million children in Kenya have access to adult content. How can we mitigate this? Currently, though not rolled out in Africa, in future one will need an ID to register on Instagram. How effective has Youtube for Kids, Facebook for Kids been like in our own households?

Link: https://nation.africa/kenya/news/study-reveals-scary-pitfalls-in-online-learning-3844030

Highlighted: a lot of work yet to be done on international transfer of data from Kenya which in turn infringes on our data privacy under protection laws. Over-reliance on foreign clouds and weak oversight mechanisms create a watershed for that. Further, the expensive litigation fees suing big tech gurus like Facebook and Twitter scares victims of data breaches through international transfer of data to foreign servers.

Underscored: for people to connect in a matter that benefits all, the digital divide must be done away with. At the moment we have two groups, one that is very high level of digital literacy and one with very low level of digital literacy.

Underlined: the question that government should address is, should we invest on the low divide which has low or no digital literacy or should we invest on the higher digital knowledge divide to ensure they advance even further? Where should the government put its money? Where will there be a greater return?

Underscored: on regulation, the legal framework is always behind the technological advancements. Technology is an area that advances and changes very fast but the law is very rigid and not ready to change that fast. How can this be addressed? Should there be digital law reforms and introduction of new study areas in the area of digital law?