Telecommunication giant, MTN Ghana, has joined the world to mark the 20th edition of the ‘Safer Internet Day’ celebration with students of the Osu Presbyterian Senior High School in Accra.
The aim of the event is to sensitise and reorient students on the safe use of the internet for an improved cybersecurity culture.
According to data by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), in 2020 alone, 71% of the world’s youth aged between 15 and 24 years were more connected to the internet than the rest of the population.
This ratio clearly indicates that there is a high likelihood that young people may become victims of cyber attacks, hence it is important for Ghanaians in general and young people in particular to learn about cyber security.
Speaking to Joy Business after the event, Senior Manager for Enterprise Information Security and Governance at MTN Ghana, Jacqueline Hanson Kotei, said MTN Ghana will not relent in its efforts to raise awareness on emerging online issues and the associated strategies for resolution.
“I think it’s imperative that we partner, encourage, help, lead and guide them on how to be safe on the internet. We have kids cyber bullied leading to things like suicide. So this is something that needs to be hammered over and over again”.
“It’s something we are going to do the entire year. We will take the opportunity to educate the youth especially the MTN customers as well”, she added.
Headmaster of the School, Vincent Esoah commended MTN for the move and passionately appeal to both the organisation and corporate Ghana to help the school with computers to support academic work.
He emphasised that even though the school is ICT inclined, there is a deficit of ICT gadgets like computers, therefore the school resorts to renting computers for writing the West African Senior High School Certificate Examination.
“Education is a shared responsibility and having had MTN to come to your school, we can’t but provide support, for our ICT department. We are having over 300 students doing elective ICT and we have very few computers and so we often rent computers to write WASSCE. We are appealing to MTN and other corporate bodies to support”.
Some students who spoke to Joy Business expressed gratitude to MTN for the insight on Cyber security and promised to be cautious on the internet.
Besides the education on cyber security, students received MTN souvenirs like T-shirts, notepads, pencil case, tablets, among others items
The Safer Internet Day Celebration is organised in the second week of February each year and this year’s ceelbration was under the theme “Together for a better internet”.
The Headmaster of the Osu Presbyterian Senior High School, Vincent Esoah, made an appeal to MTN Ghana to support the ICT Department with laptops and other ICT-related equipment to enhance teaching and learning.
“The school has about 300 students studying ICT but has few laptops to enhance their learning. Anytime we have WASSCE, we are forced to rent laptops which cost the school a lot of money. We are appealing to MTN Ghana to come to our aid in providing the school with laptops to support our teaching and learning,” he said.