RFLD’s regional report Online violence against women in West and Central Africa 2026 brings together surveys, police statistics, national laws and documented cases from 17 countries. This article sets out its key findings in plain terms, with the figures behind each one.
1. The region is the least documented on the continent
West and Central Africa is the least documented region of Africa on technology-facilitated gender-based violence. No country in the region has a nationally representative prevalence survey on online violence against women. A 2026 scoping review of sub-Saharan Africa found only two West African studies among 17, one from Nigeria and one from Ghana.
2. Many women are affected, and few report
The only survey covering the whole region, run by Internet Sans Frontières in 2019 across 18 countries, found that 45.5% of women on social media had experienced online gender-based violence. Only 15% had reported it. A further 28.5% changed how they used social media after the abuse.
The low reporting rate matters. When women do not report, the harm stays invisible in official statistics, and the case for action looks weaker than it is.
The region is also part of a wider pattern. Plan International’s 2020 survey of girls and young women aged 15 to 25, which included Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Zambia, found that 54% of African respondents had experienced online harassment. In Senegal, one of five countries in the 2020 Pollicy study, 86% of women surveyed were unaware of laws protecting them.
3. Women in public life are prime targets
A 2021 study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the African Parliamentary Union interviewed 224 women, including 137 parliamentarians, from 50 African countries. It found that 42% had received threats of death, rape, beating or abduction, mostly through social media. Women journalists face similar patterns. Global surveys of women journalists show that online abuse increasingly spills into physical attacks.
4. Caseloads are rising, and the data is not disaggregated
Benin recorded more than 6,500 cybercrime complaints in 2025, against about 4,000 in 2024. Côte d’Ivoire’s cybercrime platform recorded 8,132 complaints in 2023, up from 5,302 in 2021. Neither country publishes data by sex or by type of offence, so it is impossible to say how many of these complaints concern violence against women.
5. Few laws name the harm
Among the countries reviewed, only three explicitly criminalise the sharing of intimate images without consent. All three are English-speaking. Ghana’s Cybersecurity Act 2020 led the way. Sierra Leone followed in 2021, and Liberia adopted its Cybercrime Act in 2025. French-speaking frameworks rely on general offences relating to privacy or harassment, which survivors and prosecutors find harder to use.
6. The new continental treaty is waiting for ratifications
The African Union adopted the Convention on Ending Violence against Women and Girls in February 2025. In May 2026 it had eight signatures and no ratifications. It needs 15 ratifications to enter into force. In West and Central Africa, the signatories are the DRC, Ghana, Liberia, The Gambia and Equatorial Guinea. No francophone West African state had signed.
What connects these findings
Read together, the findings describe a cycle. Women experience abuse and rarely report it. Weak data makes it easy for governments to treat online violence as marginal. Without laws that name the harm, police and prosecutors struggle to respond, which discourages reporting further.
The report argues that each link in this cycle can be broken. It proposes recommendations for states and the African Commission, for regional bodies and technology companies, for funders and for civil society and the media.
Where to go next
The report summary gives an overview of all 13 chapters. For the wider legal picture on women’s rights in each country, see RFLD’s women’s rights laws pages. Other articles in this series look at each finding in more depth, from national laws to platform moderation.
RFLD’s member organisations work with women who face this violence every day. These findings give them, and their partners, a shared evidence base to act on.
About the report
This article draws on RFLD’s report Online violence against women in West and Central Africa 2026, published on 4 October 2026. Read the summary, download the English edition or the French edition.
