On 27 and 28 October 2026, delegates from Nigeria, The Gambia and Benin meet in Abuja for a regional conference on electoral integrity and peaceful participation through electoral literacy for women and young women in West Africa. The conference is organised under the EU Support to ECOWAS in Peace, Security and Governance (EPSG) project. RFLD is represented by Ileola Maroufatou FALOLA, Coordinator of the RFLD Members’ Platform. This article explains why the conference matters and what RFLD brings to the discussions.
Why this conference matters
Elections are the moment when the promise of equal citizenship is tested in public. Women in West Africa vote in large numbers, yet they remain a small minority among candidates, elected officials and the people who run electoral processes. Young women face a double barrier, since age and gender both count against them when parties choose candidates or when communities decide who is allowed to speak.
The Abuja conference starts from a simple idea. Women and young women who understand how elections work, who know their rights and who can recognise early signs of violence are better placed to take part safely and to hold institutions to account. Electoral literacy is a tool for participation. It also protects peace, because informed citizens are harder to manipulate with false information or with calls to violence.
Over two days, the programme covers the structural, legal and socio-cultural barriers to women’s and young people’s participation, the prevention of electoral violence, the early warning signs that come before it and shared strategies against misinformation. Country working groups for Nigeria, The Gambia and Benin will each draft ten priority recommendations. On the second day, delegates will work on community action plans for coming election cycles, a roadmap for the One Voice Network and a multi-country Charter of Principles on women’s participation in electoral cycles. The conference closes with a high-level roundtable that aims to secure at least three concrete commitments per country from institutions and civil society leaders, and with a regional communiqué.
ECOWAS will present its own work on women’s participation in electoral processes, and the conference brings together diplomatic partners, national institutions, women leaders and community activists who were trained in earlier phases of the programme.
Who represents RFLD
Ileola Maroufatou FALOLA coordinates the RFLD Members’ Platform, the space through which the network’s member organisations exchange and carry their priorities into regional and continental processes. Her daily work is with the organisations themselves: women’s rights groups and associations of young women that work far from capital cities and rarely get a seat at regional tables.
This is why her presence in Abuja matters. The conference asks how training turns into action in communities. The Members’ Platform is where RFLD sees that question answered, or left unanswered, every week. She brings to the room the experience of organisations that mobilise voters, accompany women candidates at local level and deal with the consequences when an election turns tense.
What RFLD brings to the table
A presence in all three countries
The three countries at the heart of this conference are countries where RFLD is registered and works. RFLD is registered as an NGO in Nigeria, The Gambia and Benin, and holds International Organisation status in Senegal. Its Africa Office is in Accra, Ghana. Its six offices include the Nigeria Office in Lagos, the Francophone Hub in Porto-Novo, the ACHPR Liaison office in Banjul and the office for member and local platforms in Igolo, Benin.
This footprint lets RFLD speak about the three countries from inside. The cross-border learning that the conference wants to encourage is part of how RFLD already works: lessons from one country travel to the others through staff, member organisations and shared programmes.
A network of 1,143 member organisations
Founded in 2013, RFLD is a pan-African Afrofeminist network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries. Many of these organisations are small. They work in local languages, in rural areas and with women who are often reached by nobody else. When a regional conference adopts a Charter of Principles or a set of country recommendations, the real test is whether these commitments reach the local level. A network of this size is one of the channels that can carry them there.
RFLD’s contribution in Abuja is to make that link explicit. Commitments adopted in Abuja need local organisations that know about them, can explain them to voters and can report back when they are not respected. The Members’ Platform can help circulate the conference outcomes, collect feedback from members in Nigeria, The Gambia and Benin, and feed that feedback into the follow-up of the commitments.
Evidence on online violence against women in politics
One of the conference themes is the fight against misinformation and election-related violence. RFLD has recent evidence to share on this. Its 2026 report on online violence against women in West and Central Africa gives a full chapter to women in public life.
The report draws on a study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the African Parliamentary Union. Among the women interviewed, 42% had received threats of death, rape, beating or abduction, mostly through social media, and 46% had faced online attacks. The report also cites monitoring by the Media Foundation for West Africa in Ghana, which recorded 31 posts of online gender-based violence against women politicians in a single month.
One finding is directly relevant to the Abuja discussions. In Nigeria’s 2024 governorship races in Edo and Ondo states, the Centre for Democracy and Development found only limited disinformation targeting women, because no woman was a serious contender. Online attacks grow with women’s political viability. As more women stand and win, abuse is likely to increase unless prevention and response are in place before polling day. You can read more in our article Women in politics face online abuse that grows with their influence.
This evidence supports practical steps the conference can take up: priority reporting channels on platforms for women candidates during elections, preparation of candidates before campaigns start and agreed reporting routes between electoral bodies, platforms and civil society.
Legal knowledge for every country
Electoral literacy includes knowing what the law says. RFLD has mapped women’s rights laws in all 55 African Union member states, with treaty status, constitutional provisions and national laws on 23 topics, each linked to its source. Delegates from Nigeria, The Gambia and Benin can use these women’s rights laws pages to check the legal basis for women’s political participation in their country and to compare it with their neighbours.
The continental framework is also clear. Article 9 of the Maputo Protocol guarantees women’s right to take part in political life and decision-making. 46 of the 55 African Union member states have ratified the Protocol. RFLD follows its implementation and brings these questions before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, where it holds Observer Status N°553. When online abuse or threats push women to withdraw from an election, the right protected by Article 9 is weakened, and regional commitments should say so.
Role models and visibility
Young women are more likely to stand for office when they can see women who did it before them. RFLD recently published Women icons of Africa, a free directory of more than 2,500 women leaders from the 55 African Union member states and the diaspora, with a page and a source for each profile. It can serve electoral literacy sessions, school programmes and media work that want to show a different picture of who leads.
Funding for organisations on the ground
Training and commitments only last if local organisations have the means to act. RFLD runs grant programmes for women’s rights organisations. Between June and September 2026, it awarded 27 grants worth US$722,100 to 26 organisations. Some of these grants support organisations working with Vulnerable Groups that prefer not to be named. Flexible funding allows organisations to respond when the context changes quickly, which is often the case around elections.
Experience of change
RFLD contributed to the advocacy behind Benin’s Law No. 2021-12 on sexual and reproductive health and to the campaign in The Gambia that kept the ban on FGM in 2024. These experiences show that women’s organisations can shape laws when they are organised and present at the right moment. The same skills apply to elections, where knowing the calendar and the decision makers makes a real difference.
From Abuja to the region
This conference follows other moments where RFLD has worked on these issues this month. In early October, RFLD took part in the national consultation on technology-facilitated gender-based violence held in Abuja, represented by its Nigeria Country Representative. A few days later, at the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission in Dakar, RFLD delivered an oral statement and organised several panels on women’s rights and on the protection of women human rights defenders.
The Abuja conference adds an electoral angle to this work. Elections are a period when online abuse, disinformation and threats against women peak. They are also the period when the gains made in law and in public opinion can be lost if women are pushed out. A regional approach helps because the same tactics travel across borders, and so can the answers.
What RFLD will push for
During the country working groups and the drafting of the Charter of Principles, RFLD will support recommendations along these lines:
- Clear measures against online and offline violence targeting women candidates, voters and election workers, with rapid reporting routes in place before each election.
- Electoral literacy programmes delivered in local languages and through local women’s organisations, so that they reach rural women and young women.
- Commitments from political parties on fair access for women and young women to candidate lists and to campaign resources.
- Collection of sex- and age-disaggregated data on participation and on electoral violence, made public after each election.
- A role for women’s organisations in monitoring the commitments adopted in Abuja, with a review at the next regional meeting.
- Flexible funding for local women’s organisations that work on peaceful participation between elections as well as during campaigns.
RFLD will also offer its open tools to the One Voice Network and to the national delegations. The women’s rights laws pages and the report on online violence are free to use, as is the Women icons of Africa directory.
What comes next
After the conference, RFLD will share the main outcomes and the regional communiqué with its member organisations in Nigeria, The Gambia and Benin through the Members’ Platform. We will follow the commitments made by institutions and see how our members can support their implementation in their communities. We will report back on this site.
Organisations that work on women’s political participation and wish to connect with RFLD can write to admin@rflgd.org.
About RFLD
The Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement (RFLD), the Women Leaders Network for Development, is a pan-African Afrofeminist network founded in 2013. It brings together 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries. Its Africa Office is in Accra, Ghana, and it works through six offices in Ghana, Senegal, Benin, The Gambia and Nigeria. RFLD works on human rights, gender equality, health, development, peace and security, and holds Observer Status N°553 with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
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