Ghana’s First Lady Mrs Lordina Dramani Mahama took the global stage in Washington, D.C. this week to deliver a message both personal and urgent: the world must do more to protect its children in the digital age — because the stakes have never been higher.
Speaking at the Fostering the Future Together Global Coalition Summit, Mrs Mahama opened with a moment that captured the paradox at the heart of her address. On Ghana’s 69th Independence Day — which fell on her birthday — she found herself scrolling through TikTok, watching young Ghanaians dance and send wishes from across the country.
Many could not make it to the national celebrations in person, but technology gave them a voice and a presence. It was a reminder, she said, of what digital platforms can do when they work for young people rather than against them.
That duality — technology as both gift and threat — ran through everything that followed. Mrs Mahama noted that nearly seven in ten people globally now use social media, and in Ghana alone, between 8 and 15 million internet users are predominantly young. Quoting President John Dramani Mahama’s Independence Day address, she described a generation holding tools their parents could barely have imagined:
“In their hands, a smartphone becomes a classroom, a business platform, a creative studio, and a gateway to the global economy.”
But she was equally direct about what can go wrong when that power goes unguided. Research she cited showed that one in five young victims of cyberbullying withdraws from school entirely — a quiet, devastating consequence of online harm that rarely makes headlines. Ghana, she said, is not waiting for the problem to deepen.
The country has strengthened its legislative frameworks, sharpened enforcement mechanisms and launched the Safer Digital Ghana campaign to raise public awareness and combat online abuse. School-based digital literacy programmes are underway, and partnerships with technology companies including Meta and Google are being leveraged for content moderation.
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With 68 percent internet penetration — among the highest on the continent according to GSMA data — Ghana is navigating the tension between digital expansion and child protection with a seriousness of purpose that Mrs Mahama urged other nations to match.
Thanking US First Lady Melania Trump for convening the summit, Mrs Mahama closed with a call that framed child online safety not as a policy preference but as a moral imperative. Protecting children’s digital futures, she declared, is
“Our moral duty, our generational responsibility, and our shared global mission.”
The two-day summit is building on international frameworks including the UN’s Children and Digital report and the EU’s Digital Services Act, rallying governments around coordinated action on one of the defining challenges of the connected age.