Enhancing Cybersecurity Education for African Children Through Culturally Tailored Comics: A Controlled Study

This paper presents a culturally grounded approach to cybersecurity education for African children through the use of illustrated comic books. As digital adoption rapidly increases across Africa, children face growing exposure to cyber threats such as cyberbullying, phishing, malware, and cyberstalking. However, existing cybersecurity education materials often lack cultural relevance, limiting their effectiveness in underserved communities.

To address this gap, we design and evaluate an African-themed cybersecurity comic that integrates storytelling, local cultural elements, and visual learning techniques. The study involves 300 students across diverse educational settings in Rwanda, including urban, rural, private, and refugee camp schools. Using a controlled experimental design, students were divided into a treatment group (comic-based learning) and a control group (traditional text-based instruction), with pre- and post-assessments used to measure learning outcomes.

Results show statistically significant improvements in cybersecurity knowledge across all groups, with particularly strong gains in under-resourced environments. The findings demonstrate that culturally tailored visual storytelling enhances engagement, comprehension, and retention of cybersecurity concepts among children.

This work highlights the importance of culturally relevant pedagogy in cybersecurity education and provides a scalable framework for improving digital safety awareness among children in Africa and other underserved regions.