RFLD’s new regional report, Online violence against women in West and Central Africa 2026, opens with an uncomfortable finding. West and Central Africa is the least documented region of the continent on technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Women in the region are harassed and threatened online every day, yet the evidence that would allow governments to act is thin.
What the evidence base looks like
The report states plainly that there is no nationally representative prevalence survey on online violence against women in any country of the region. What exists is a small number of multi-country studies that include some West and Central African countries, alongside police caseloads and press reports of official statements.
Only a handful of surveys cover the region at all. The most widely cited is a 2019 survey by Internet Sans Frontières of women aged 18 to 45 on Facebook and Twitter in 18 countries of West and Central Africa. It found that 45.5% had experienced online gender-based violence. It was a short survey run over one week in January 2019, and it remains the only figure that covers the whole region.
The 2020 study by Pollicy and the Association for Progressive Communications surveyed 3,306 women in five African cities. Dakar was the only city from the region. Across the full sample, 28.2% of women had experienced online gender-based violence.
A scoping review published in PLOS ONE in August 2026 gathered 17 studies on technology-facilitated violence in sub-Saharan Africa published between 2019 and 2024. Seven came from Kenya. Only two were West African, one from Nigeria and one from Ghana. The authors explicitly name West and Central Africa as under-represented.
Why borrowed figures are a problem
Much of what is said about “Africa” in recent international campaigns draws on studies from East and Southern Africa, or on the same few sources. A UN Women press release of November 2025 on digital violence in East and Southern Africa, for example, relied on a study of five Southern African countries and on the Pollicy study.
Borrowed figures can mislead. One estimate of “38% of African women online” circulating in the region is in fact the global figure from an Economist Intelligence Unit survey of 51 countries. RFLD’s report is careful to separate global figures from regional ones, so that advocates do not build their case on a statistic that does not describe the women they serve.
Even a UN Women regional study of gender observatories in West and Central Africa, published in September 2025, did not mention technology-facilitated violence at all. The silence is itself a finding.
Police data fills some of the gap, with limits
Specialised police units in some countries now publish annual caseloads. Benin’s national digital investigation centre recorded more than 6,500 cybercrime complaints in 2025. Côte d’Ivoire’s cybercrime platform recorded 8,132 complaints in 2023. These figures show growing demand for help.
They count complaints, not victims. Neither country publishes its data by sex or by type of offence. A complaint about sextortion and a complaint about online fraud look the same in the annual total. The report treats this missing breakdown as a finding in its own right.
What RFLD asks for
The report’s recommendations respond directly to the data gap:
- States should publish annual data from police, prosecutors, courts and data protection authorities, disaggregated by sex and by type of offence.
- States should add a module on online violence to national surveys on violence against women.
- The African Commission should publish the continental study mandated by Resolution 591 and ensure that it includes primary data from West and Central Africa.
- Funders should support national statistical offices and research institutions to produce primary data on online violence in the region.
These steps are modest in cost. A single survey module, repeated over time, would give each country a baseline it does not have today.
Why this matters for RFLD members
RFLD’s member organisations increasingly report that women who speak up online pay for it. Without data, their accounts are easy to dismiss as anecdote. With data, they become evidence for law reform and for the shadow reports that civil society submits to the African Commission. You can explore the legal situation country by country on RFLD’s women’s rights laws pages.
Counting is the first step towards protection. The report is RFLD’s contribution to that count, and an invitation to governments and researchers to complete it.
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.
