The government of Mozambique is reviewing its legal framework and expanding state intervention to protect minors online, moving swiftly to curb rising digital violence against children and girls.
The National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (INTIC) convened a strategic stakeholder webinar, "Legal Framework of ICTs and Online Child Protection in Mozambique: Current Situation, Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives," to address accelerating safety risks facing minors.
The regulatory push comes at a time when, according to analysis from the United Nations, fewer than 40% of African countries possess laws targeting digital violence.
The international organisation adds that this legislative vacuum leaves nearly 1.78 billion women and girls unprotected across the continent. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the safety gap is even wider, with only 25% of countries providing concrete legal protections.
While regional peers like South Africa, Kenya, Botswana, Eswatini, Mauritius, and Rwanda have passed dedicated cyber crime legislations, active enforcement remains fragile and gender-focused protections are frequently overlooked.
Rosa Dique, head of the data protection department at INTIC, said the state must aggressively modernise legislation to shield youth from digital risks.
Dique specifically targeted online sexual abuse, child sexual exploitation, cyber bullying, harassment, grooming, and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.
“The state must guarantee effective mechanisms to receive, investigate, and respond to reports of crimes committed against children and girls in the digital environment,” Dique asserted.
She added that officials must launch permanent digital literacy campaigns targeting parents, guardians, teachers, and communities.
Concurrently, under the INTIC Digital Statute for Children and Adolescents (ECA Digital), social media networks are now legally mandated to flag and report suspected crimes against minors to local authorities.
According to INTIC, officials are drafting stringent reporting compliance standards to eliminate delays in criminal investigations.
“The requirements will be included in a decree that the Ministry of Justice and Public Security expects to publish in July. The goal is for the rules in the document to help facilitate the analysis of materials and accelerate investigations against child sexual exploitation networks,” stated the institute.
Thais Gomes, a consultant and data protection specialist at INTIC, raised the alarm over the risks of exposing children to public digital platforms without parental consent.
Gomes called for the rapid development of specialised incident-reporting portals, stronger parental controls, heightened cyber security literacy, and secure digital identities to anchor safer browsing practices.
As digital transformation drives African governments to rewrite technology and data laws, experts warn that the operational gap between technology and stagnant regulatory oversight has never been wider.
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