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Emirates Safer Internet Society signs MoU to explore RoseShield for UAE children

The Emirates Safer Internet Society has signed a Memorandum of Understanding establishing a framework of cooperation on digital child safety in the United Arab Emirates. The agreement was signed at eSafe’s Annual General Meeting before the organization’s board members and founders. eSafe is a UAE non-profit licensed under Ministerial Decree No. 915 of 2015, and has shaped the country’s digital safety agenda for a decade.

The signing coincided with a UAE Cabinet resolution issued the same day, setting fifteen as the minimum age for social media use and requiring platforms to implement AI-supported age verification under Federal Decree-Law No. 26 of 2025 on Child Digital Safety. RoseShield’s on-device architecture, which keeps analysis on the child’s own device rather than transmitting data to external servers, aligns directly with the data-minimization principles in that legislation.

Immediately after the signing, ChildSafe.dev co-founder Steaphen Antony Venansious gave a live technical demonstration to eSafe board members, focused on the privacy architecture and the localised alert flow to parents and institutional safeguarding leads. Both parties emphasised that the framework is for child safeguarding and digital wellbeing only, and is not intended for behavioral advertising, commercial surveillance or unrelated profiling.

ChildSafe.dev and Online Safety Lab sign to deploy the RoseShield Schools Protection Program across South Africa

ChildSafe.dev and Online Safety Lab have executed the agreement to deploy the RoseShield Schools Protection Program and RoseShield Messenger across South African schools. The agreement establishes OS Lab as ChildSafe.dev’s authorized channel partner for South Africa.

OS Lab chief executive Mashilo Boloka has positioned the organization as South Africa’s external research partner for AI governance and online child safety, following the withdrawal of the country’s Draft National AI Policy — a development that raised demand for credible independent infrastructure to advance the child digital safety agenda.

This is the largest international agreement signed to date, and establishes the operational template for further African market expansion.

Ghana Internet Safety Foundation signs to bring RoseShield to Ghanaian schools

ChildSafe.dev has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ghana Internet Safety Foundation, bringing the RoseShield Schools Protection Program to schools across Ghana. GISF leads implementation on the ground and holds the safeguarding relationships with participating schools, education authorities and parents.

GISF has spent years building Ghana’s online safety capability through school outreach, teacher training and public awareness work, and is among the country’s established voices on child protection online. That relationship layer is what makes a deployment work. Detection technology is only useful where someone local is trusted enough to act on what it finds.

As in every RoseShield deployment, analysis happens on the student’s own device and the safeguarding decisions stay with the Ghanaian organizations responsible for those children. ChildSafe.dev supplies the engine; GISF and the schools decide what happens when something is found.

Ghana joins ChildSafe.dev’s African schools network alongside South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Cameroon.

Eveminet brings RoseShield to Kenyan schools

ChildSafe.dev has partnered with Eveminet Communications Solutions Limited, founded by digital safety advocate and educator Evelyn Kasina, to bring the RoseShield Schools Protection Program and RoseShield Messenger to Kenya. Eveminet serves as authorized channel partner for Kenya, with a two-phase deployment beginning in the Nairobi Metropolitan Area.

Eveminet brings more than a decade of operational presence in Kenya’s digital safety, education and youth empowerment sectors. Data handling, deployment standards and joint accountability for safeguarding outcomes are set out in the partnership agreement.

RoseShield’s on-device architecture suits the variable connectivity of Kenyan schools, with detection processed locally on student devices. The partnership extends ChildSafe.dev’s East African footprint alongside the existing Online Safety Foundation Uganda program.

Africa Child Online Protection Program agreed with AfroLeadership, beginning in Cameroon

ChildSafe.dev has partnered with AfroLeadership, the Cameroonian civil society organization led by Charlie Martial Ngounou, to establish the Africa Child Online Protection Program — beginning in Cameroon and structured for pan-African expansion. AfroLeadership is the programmatic implementation partner, with MyData Global joining as the data governance and digital rights anchor.

The program combines RoseShield on-device detection, ChildSafe.dev’s platform safeguarding infrastructure and RoseShield Messenger with structured digital literacy curriculum for Cameroonian schools, youth-serving institutions and parents.

The MyData Global partnership means the program’s data governance is aligned with global standards for individual data rights, consent and children’s privacy from day one.

Loy Ehlers selected as a judge for the SafeAI Cup in the United Arab Emirates

ChildSafe.dev chief operating officer and general counsel Loy Ehlers has been selected as a judge for the SafeAI Cup, an international AI safety competition held in the United Arab Emirates. The competition convenes researchers, technologists and young innovators working on safety-by-design AI, child digital safety and ethical AI governance, with entries assessed by an international panel drawn from the legal, technical and child protection sectors.

Ehlers brings his seat on the SAFE Governance Council in the AI Governance and Regulatory portfolio, and the operational experience of leading ChildSafe.dev’s international deployments across Africa and the Middle East.

Loy Ehlers appointed to the founding governance council of an international child safety standards body

ChildSafe.dev chief operating officer and general counsel Loy Ehlers has accepted appointment as a founding member of the SAFE Governance Council, holding the AI Governance and Regulatory seat.

SAFE — Safeguarding Architecture for Foundational Environments — is an independent governance body developing the first enforceable international standard for safeguarding in AI-mediated environments. It separates standard-setting, certification and implementation into three structurally independent layers, addressing the conflict of interest inherent in platform self-regulation. The Council consists of six founding domain seats covering clinical safeguarding, academic research, legal and regulatory expertise, technology and security, civil society and survivor advocacy, and insurance and risk.

“Platforms currently define, measure, and report their own safety. SAFE ends that arrangement.” — Loy Ehlers

Online Safety Foundation Uganda signs first two school pilots in Kampala

ChildSafe.dev has partnered with the Online Safety Foundation Uganda to bring RoseShield to schools in Kampala. Two structured school pilots are signed, the first at Sayidina Abubakar Secondary School. OSFU’s Dr. Sulaiman Kawooya, Director of E-Safety, leads ground-level implementation.

Uganda’s 2024 national census found that children under eighteen make up half of the country’s 45.9 million people, and Kampala has the highest secondary school enrollment rate in the country. RoseShield’s on-device architecture requires no consistent cloud connectivity, which makes it deployable in schools with variable internet infrastructure.

The pilots establish the deployment model and monitoring framework for scaling across Kampala’s wider school network, with national deployment a stated objective of the partnership.

ChildSafe.dev and Online Safety Lab sign for South Africa

Robert McNamara, chief executive of ChildSafe.dev, and Dr. Mashilo Boloka, chief executive of Online Safety Lab, have signed a formal agreement bringing the RoseShield Schools Protection Program and RoseShield Messenger to South Africa.

This is the first deployment of ChildSafe.dev’s integrated child protection platform on the African continent, and positions both organizations for coordinated deployment across sub-Saharan Africa.

ChildSafe.dev introduces RoseShield Messenger, a supervised platform for young people

ChildSafe.dev has introduced RoseShield Messenger, a supervised social and messaging platform built for children and young people. Unlike consumer messaging apps that retrofit safety onto platforms designed for adults, it was architected around child protection from the first day.

Every contact, conversation and call passes through RoseShield detection — grooming patterns, channel evasion, off-platform redirection, cross-age contact risk and exploitation indicators. Flagged activity is routed to verified moderators with conversation context, risk scoring and case management tools.

The platform is built for institutional deployment — NGOs, schools, youth programs and international organizations that need a verified-safe communication channel for the young people in their care.