The role of technology in addressing some of the most pressing challenges in the world cannot be understated.
Public-private cooperation will play a pivotal role in creating an enabling environment for this to come to fruition. Uber hosted the Tech for Safety summit in Nairobi to deliberate with entrepreneurs, businesses, the government and the private sector on how to tap technology to address challenging personal safety concerns, including safety within communities, road safety, or the safety of individuals using online platforms.
During the summit, keynote speaker Philip Thigo, a tech, data and policy expert, dived into how collaboration between tech and policy is important in creating a safer society. An example of such collaboration in action is the National Transport and Safety Authority, whose mandate on road safety is minimizing loss of lives through road crashes, and who are presently developing safe road networks for all road users with diverse partners on board.
In addition, initiatives like Smart and Safe Kenya Transport (smarTTrans) employ technology, analytics as well as policy experiments in order to save lives and help foster greater inclusive growth for Kenyans.
Safety also extends to apps, which have become vital for our productivity at home and work, as well as in fulfilling our entertainment and social needs. Facebookâs Mercy Ndegwa, Head of Public Policy East Africa, spoke about how the social networking platform is using technology to help make the Internet safer.
Facebook has open-sourced two technologies that enables the company to detect identical and nearly identical photos and videos as well as more specifically harmful content, to assist in preventing these from being shared and going viral.
Uber greatly values user privacy. In fact, data privacy and security have never been more important in how we use technology to make our lives easier, more convenient, or more connected to the people and communities we care about.