technology-facilitated violence (TFV) is reshaping harm for women and girls across Africa. Whether called online gender-based violence, online violence against women, or technology-facilitated gender sexual violence, the danger is the same. TFV spans image-based abuse, sextortion, impersonation, online stalking, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and AI-generated intimate content.
The digital age has given misogyny new tools: reach and speed.
What once happened behind closed doors or on streets now unfolds constantly on screens.
Connectivity offers opportunities for learning, social participation, and entrepreneurship, but it has also enabled a shadow ecosystem of abuse. Research in 2022 across eight Southern African countries confirmed that women of all ages face harassment, manipulation, threats, deepfake pornography, and partner-driven digital surveillance.
THE COST
Activists report coordinated campaigns designed to silence them. Girls face unprecedented forms of coercion and exposure.
Survivors experience trauma, social withdrawal, economic loss, and fear. Many remain silent because legal language is inaccessible; where laws exist, they often fail to protect and sometimes blame victims.
As Africa expands connectivity, tech sectors, and online publics, it risks creating spaces where women feel unsafe.
When online environments become hostile, the most vulnerable retreat, leaving civic, political, and economic opportunities to those already in power. This cost is not only personal but societal.
Viewed through a feminist lens, TFV is not a technological flaw – it is a digital extension of patriarchal power.
Long before smartphones, women’s visibility was policed through shame, surveillance, silence, and threats. Digital platforms accelerate these tactics, giving them permanence and boundless reach.
Deepfake pornography revives old methods of weaponising women’s sexuality, while non-consensual image sharing perpetuates cultural punishment for perceived sexual transgressions.
Online harassment underscores that digital public spaces, like physical ones, remain contested territory.
TFV magnifies inequality. Women with limited digital literacy, weak legal protections, minimal support networks, or scarce financial resources face the most harm.
Reporting is often futile: police lack training, and legal systems are outdated or inconsistently applied. TFV, therefore, sits at the intersection of misogyny, economic inequality, weak institutions, and social stigma. It is a structural issue.
CONSEQUENCES
The impact extends beyond individual survivors. Online misogyny suppresses journalists, politicians, activists, and human-rights defenders.
Harassment discourages women from public debate or political life. Feminist movements report intensified digital attacks, particularly when organising around contentious issues.
This erosion of civic participation becomes a democratic crisis. TFV is thus both interpersonal abuse and a tool of political suppression shaping who gets to speak.
Against this backdrop, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) has emerged as a crucial voice.
Resolution 522 acknowledges the disproportionate impact of online violence, calls for survivor-centred legal reform, and urges states to integrate online abuse into definitions of gender-based violence.
It establishes a continental expectation that digital harm is preventable and countries are obligated to act.
In May 2024, Resolution 591 mandated a continent-wide study on digital violence against women’s rights, offering comprehensive evidence to guide legal reform and stronger national responses.
Together, these resolutions provide a powerful framework for feminist advocacy and accountability.
KNOWLEDGE GAPS
Despite progress, large gaps remain. Few evaluations show which legal, psychosocial, or technological interventions work.
Platforms remain insufficiently scrutinised. Survivor-centred research is essential, using methods that protect confidentiality and avoid re-traumatisation.
Without solid evidence, states continue offering piecemeal responses instead of structural reform.
Ending TFV requires reimagining digital spaces with survivors at the centre. Trauma-informed and culturally grounded support systems – legal advice, psychosocial support, digital-safety guidance, and strong peer networks – are crucial.
Activists need sustained support to remain visible and safe. Cybercrime laws must explicitly cover digital gender-based violence, and institutions must build capacity through training police, judges, health workers, and social services.
Robust data systems are essential for tracking patterns and ensuring accountability. Long-term funding is equally critical.
Donors must invest not only in projects but in movement-building and regional solidarity, since addressing TFV in isolation hides its root causes.
OPPORTUNITIES
We must create opportunities to centre survivor stories, strengthen partnerships, and show policymakers and donors the seriousness of this human-rights issue, which affects economies, democracies, and social cohesion.
Technology is not the enemy. Digital spaces can be sites of liberation, connection, and collective organising if shaped by equality and justice.
Ending TFV requires addressing structural roots, aligning national action with continental commitments, funding feminist movements, and building safer digital ecosystems.
The ACHPR resolutions mark a rare moment where law, advocacy, and lived realities converge. The choice is clear: allow digital spaces to deepen exclusion or transform them into arenas of dignity, safety, and solidarity.
Ending technology-facilitated violence is possible – and urgent. We must act now.
- Nashilongo Gervasius is a technology policy researcher. The views expressed here do not represent those of her employer.
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