Police statistics are among the few regular data sources on online harm in West and Central Africa. RFLD’s report Online violence against women in West and Central Africa 2026 examines what they show and what they leave out.
Benin: a sharp rise in complaints
Benin’s national digital investigation centre (CNIN) replaced the former cybercrime office in November 2023. It recorded more than 6,500 complaints in 2025, against about 4,000 in 2024, a rise of 62.5%. Cyberharassment and online fraud were the main types of offence. The centre attributes part of the rise to growing public confidence in filing complaints.
A detailed report on the profiles of offenders and victims has been announced but had not been located when RFLD’s report was finalised.
The report also notes a discrepancy. An earlier estimate by WILDAF-AO in 2025 put complaints at more than 50 a day. The official annual total of about 6,500 is roughly 18 a day. The difference probably comes from contacts that did not become formal complaints. The same WILDAF-AO report found that Facebook accounted for 62% of cases and WhatsApp for 21%, and that fewer than 20% of victims file complaints.
Côte d’Ivoire: steady growth
Côte d’Ivoire’s cybercrime platform (PLCC) has published caseloads for several years. Complaints rose from 5,302 in 2021 to 8,132 in 2023. Financial losses in 2023 reached 9.2 billion FCFA.
The PLCC does not publish a breakdown by sex or by type of offence. The report treats this absence as a finding in its own right.
Senegal and Ghana
In Senegal, figures reported by the police in March 2026 showed 3,794 cybercrime offences recorded and 257 people referred for prosecution. Of those referred, 84% were men and 16% women. The data protection authority processed 456 cases in 2025, which produced 20 complaints.
In Ghana, the Cyber Security Authority reports sextortion as a separate category. Losses to sextortion and online blackmail rose from GH¢103,663 in January to April 2024 to GH¢499,044 in the same months of 2025.
What the figures cannot tell us
Police data counts complaints, not victims. One woman may file several complaints, and many women file none. In the 2019 Internet Sans Frontières survey across 18 countries of the region, only 15% of women affected by online violence had reported it.
Without a breakdown by sex and by type of offence, it is impossible to know how many complaints concern violence against women. A complaint about sextortion and a complaint about mobile money fraud are counted the same way. Survivors of intimate image abuse disappear into a general cybercrime total.
Why disaggregated data matters
Disaggregated data would allow governments to:
- measure the scale of online violence against women in each country;
- see which platforms are most often involved, and engage them with evidence;
- target police training on the offences that affect women most;
- track whether new laws and services make a difference over time.
The African Commission’s Resolution 522 already asks states to conduct studies and adjust crime statistics to identify gaps in law and policy.
What the report recommends
The report asks states to publish annual data from police, prosecutors, courts and data protection authorities, disaggregated by sex and by type of offence. It also asks them to train and equip specialised units and judges on digital evidence and on survivor-centred responses.
Specialised units such as Benin’s CNIN and Côte d’Ivoire’s PLCC already publish annual totals. Adding a breakdown by sex and offence would be a modest technical step, and a valuable one for policy.
For women’s organisations, the report recommends keeping these units on referral lists and helping survivors file complaints when they choose to do so. Legal action always remains the survivor’s choice.
Further reading
Read the report summary for the full findings. RFLD’s women’s rights laws pages give the legal background for each country.
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.
