TikTok Announces New Safety Initiatives for African Users

With its future in the U.S. still up in the air, TikTok continues to expand its efforts in other regions, in order to build on its extended business opportunities.

And Africa, which is steadily improving its digital connectivity, could end up playing a significant role in this.

Aligning with this, last week, TikTok held its second annual Sub-Saharan Africa Safer Internet Summit in Cape Town, South Africa, where it announced a range of updates to help ensure that African region TikTok users are safe and protected within the app.

Those include new digital literacy training, regional partnerships to combat misinformation, as well as an expansion of TikTok’s #SaferTogether campaign to more African regions, including Nigeria.

As reported by The Guardian:

“In Nigeria, the second phase of the campaign is being implemented in collaboration with the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and Data Science Nigeria (DSN). The initiative aims to reach more regions and engage stakeholders, including parents, teachers, and community leaders.”

TikTok also announced an expansion of its Global Youth Council, a consultative group of young people whom TikTok works with on safety and privacy developments. The Youth Council now includes representatives from Nigeria, as well as other Sub-Saharan African nations.

As noted, this is an important region for the app, because as more African nations improve their connective capacity, that will see millions more people gain access to platforms like TikTok. And as such, being in on the ground floor, as adoption spreads, could ensure greater opportunities for the app.

Only 27% of the total population of sub-Saharan Africa is currently using mobile internet services, with more than a billion people in Africa not online. New connectivity projects are being initiated to address network gaps, while reduced cost of access is also seeing more and more African people come online, and contribute to the digital economy.

TikTok reportedly has around 230 million users in the Middle East and Africa, making this its second largest regional market (behind Asia Pacific), and that could help it establish a foundation for significant growth in the region.

And if it loses access to its 170 million U.S. users, that could become even more important.