Former Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has called for greater accountability from technology companies in protecting children from the growing risks associated with the digital environment.
Osinbajo argued that companies developing digital platforms and products should bear the primary responsibility for ensuring the safety of young users, rather than shifting the burden to children and their parents.
He made the call in Cairo, Egypt, where he chaired a high-level session on child rights and accountability in digital product design at the 16th Annual Conference of the Pan African Lawyers Union on Monday.
A statement made available on Wednesday said the session, titled “Guardrails, Not Gates: Protecting Children in the Digital Age,” was organised by the Justice Research Institute in partnership with the African Alliance for People-Centred Justice, with support from Luminate.
Speaking during the session, Osinbajo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, criticised approaches that make children and parents primarily responsible for navigating dangers created by digital products.
“We cannot build digital environments in which the risks are engineered into the product and then expect children and parents to carry the responsibility for managing those risks.”
He said African countries must pursue a digital governance framework that balances technological innovation with the protection of children’s rights and accountability.
According to him, protecting children should not mean preventing them from accessing technology, but ensuring that digital platforms are deliberately designed to safeguard their welfare, dignity and development.
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“The objective is not to build gates that exclude children from technology. It is to establish guardrails that ensure technology works for children rather than exploiting their vulnerabilities.”
The session examined the responsibility of technology companies when digital platforms and artificial intelligence systems expose children to dangers such as exploitation, manipulation, harmful content and excessive collection of personal data.
Lawyers, judges, regulators, policymakers and child-rights advocates from different parts of Africa participated in the deliberations.
They considered six key areas contained in the proposed Cairo Declaration on Child Rights and Design Accountability in the Digital Age. The areas include safety-by-design requirements for platforms and products used by children, a ban on exploitative targeting and manipulative practices, age-appropriate design standards, algorithmic transparency and accountability, protection of children’s data, and privacy-conscious age assurance mechanisms.
Director of People-Centred Justice at JRI, Mrs Foluso Idumu-Shado, said the initiative was designed to encourage African policymakers to move beyond responding to digital harms after they occur and instead establish rules that influence how technology is created and regulated.
“Children in Africa are entering a digital environment largely designed elsewhere. We must ensure that African children are not merely protected from the consequences of technology but that their rights and interests are considered in how digital technologies are designed, deployed and regulated,” she said.
She said a people-centred approach should be judged by whether digital platforms serve children’s best interests, adding that where they fail that test, legal measures should require the companies responsible for designing and profiting from such systems to make changes.
At the end of the discussions, delegates presented a consolidated draft of the Cairo Declaration to the leadership of PALU for further consideration and action.
The initiative also includes proposed model laws and regulatory frameworks that African lawmakers, data protection agencies and other regulators can modify and apply according to the needs of their respective countries.