Stop Shifting Online Safety Burden to Children, Parents – Osinbajo

Former Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said technology companies, not children or parents, must take primary responsibility for protecting young people from digital risks.

Osinbajo said it was unacceptable to design products that embed dangers and then leave families to manage the fallout.

The former vice president stated this in Cairo, Egypt, while chairing a high-level session on child rights and design accountability in the digital age at the 16th Annual Conference of the Pan African Lawyers Union on Monday.

According to a statement made available on Wednesday, the session, titled “Guardrails, Not Gates: Protecting Children in the Digital Age,” was convened by the Justice Research Institute, in collaboration with the African Alliance for People-Centred Justice and with support from Luminate.

Osinbajo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said approaches that place the primary responsibility for online safety on children and their parents should be reconsidered.

“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 stressed that Africa’s approach must combine rights, accountability and innovation.

The goal, Osinbajo said, is not to lock children out of technology but to ensure digital spaces are built with their safety, dignity and development in mind.

“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 discussions focused on who should bear responsibility when digital products and artificial intelligence systems designed for children expose them to exploitation, manipulation, harmful content, excessive data collection and other risks.

Participants at the session included lawyers, judges, regulators, policymakers and child-rights advocates from across Africa.

They reviewed six proposed pillars of the draft Cairo Declaration on Child Rights and Design Accountability in the Digital Age, including safety-by-design obligations for digital platforms and products used by children, prohibition of exploitative targeting and manipulative practices, age-appropriate design codes, algorithmic accountability and transparency, children’s data protection, and age assurance mechanisms that protect privacy and fundamental rights.

Director of People-Centred Justice at JRI, Mrs Foluso Idumu-Shado, said the initiative aims to move African policymakers from merely reacting to digital harms to actively shaping the rules that govern technology design.

“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 added that a people-centred approach demands a simple test: does the digital environment serve the best interests of the child? If not, the law must compel those who design and profit from these systems to change.

Following the deliberations, a consolidated draft of the Cairo Declaration, incorporating amendments and priorities identified by delegates, was presented to the PALU leadership for consideration and further action.

The initiative also proposes model legal and regulatory instruments that African legislatures, data protection authorities and regulators can adapt to their national contexts.