For many women, every phone vibration carries the possibility of harm. A message from a former intimate partner. A threat from a classmate, colleague, or stranger online. A warning that intimate images will be released or sold unless she complies. s of private conversations are circulated. Images – real or fabricated – are shared to prove the threat is real. Sometimes the harm is immediate and public. Other times, it is delayed, trapping survivors in prolonged emotional terror, waiting for the moment their lives might unravel.
In response, these women withdraw. They skip work. Avoid public spaces. Fall silent. Unsure of whom to trust or where to turn, many carry the burden alone. With the rise of generative artificial intelligence, non-consensual synthetic image abuse has made tech-facilitated gender-based violence cheaper, faster, and even more devastating. Digital violence is no longer emerging – it is escalating.
And it is real violence, with real consequences: psychological trauma, reputational damage, economic exclusion, and silencing.
When TechHer Nigeria launched its digital literacy programme in 2018, the goal was to accelerate digital inclusion for marginalised women and girls. What followed was unexpected but revealing. As engagement deepened, women’s lived experiences made clear that harm was not hypothetical. It was ongoing, widespread, and deeply underreported. This reality led to the development of KURAM (meaning “Keep Me Safe” in Tiv, one of Nigeria’s languages)—TechHer’s incident-response and data aggregation platform that supports survivors of tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) in accessing justice.
Evidence from survivor-facing platforms like KURAM makes the scale of the crisis impossible to ignore. TechHer’s 2021 research on online violence in Nigeria found that six in ten women active online had experienced at least one form of digital abuse. Survivors are already seeking help—reporting incidents, asking for guidance, and searching for pathways to safety. Yet only a fraction report to authorities, and even fewer receive justice, redress, or meaningful mediation. Too often, survivors encounter outdated laws, unclear institutional mandates, limited understanding of digital evidence, and responses that minimise online harm. In such conditions, reporting becomes another site of trauma.
KURAM was not created to reinvent justice, but to close the gap between survivors’ pain and their options. Many women are silenced not by choice, but by uncertainty about whether what they experienced counts as violence, whom to trust, or what justice looks like when harm happens online. By combining reporting, survivor support, and evidence generation within a single feminist digital infrastructure, KURAM helps women reclaim their digital spaces without fear or shame and strengthens advocacy for systemic reform.
Yet tools alone are not enough.
Digital Violence Is an Extension of Offline Harm
Digital violence does not exist in a vacuum. It is an extension of the same misogyny, entitlement, and harmful social norms that govern offline spaces. Technology merely amplifies these attitudes, giving them speed, anonymity, and reach. The distinction between “online” and “real” violence is therefore false. Violence is violence.
Women and girls remain the most affected, while men, particularly young men, are disproportionately the perpetrators. This reflects deeply entrenched gender hierarchies that shape behaviour both offline and online. In Nigeria, where over 65 per cent of the population is between 15 and 45 years old, young people dominate digital spaces. They are the most exposed to online harm and the most critical agents for change.
YouthHubAfrica’s work recognises that digital behaviour is shaped long before a young person logs on. Patterns of harassment and silencing are learned in homes, schools, religious spaces, and communities, then carried into online environments. This understanding underpins YouthHubAfrica’s youth-led programming across ten Nigerian states, supported by the Ford Foundation, which mobilises peer education, male allyship, and youth leadership to prevent gender-based violence and TFGBV.
By engaging young men through initiatives like the Young Men’s Network, not as bystanders but as allies, youth-led approaches confront digital violence at its roots. Changing behaviour online also requires changing the norms that legitimise harm offline.
Demanding Systemic Change
Ending digital violence against women and girls, therefore, demands sustained systems change. Awareness campaigns urging survivors to speak out mean little without accessible reporting pathways, survivor-centred responses, and meaningful legal recourse. Addressing TFGBV in Nigeria and across West Africa requires strengthened enforcement of laws such as the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act and the Cybercrimes Act, alongside policies that explicitly recognise digital abuse.
But laws alone are insufficient without cultural accountability. Ford Foundation’s work across West Africa underscores the importance of engaging custodians of culture, traditional, cultural, and religious leaders, to condemn online violence with the same urgency as physical harm. Through partnerships with institutions such as UN Women and the Council of Traditional Leaders of Africa, this approach seeks to shift harmful norms at scale, ensuring that digital safety is not a privilege limited to urban or tech-connected women, but a right accessible to all, including rural and marginalised communities.
Sustained investment in organisations like TechHer Nigeria and YouthHubAfrica is critical to reinforcing zero tolerance for violence, online and offline, and to ensuring that survivor-centred innovation, youth leadership, and policy reform are not short-lived interventions, but enduring systems of protection.
A Call to Unite
The message is clear: technology has changed the form of violence, but not its roots. Ending digital violence requires tools and accountability, youth-led norm change and allyship, and long-term investment in culture, policy, and systems.
Across West Africa, we must unite – civil society, governments, technology platforms, cultural leaders, and funders – to build digital spaces where women and girls can participate fully and safely.
Violence is violence, whether it happens on a street corner or on a smartphone screen.
It is time to UNiTE.
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The article was written by Chioma Agwuegbo, Executive Director, TechHerNg; Olusegun Medupin, Program Manager, Youthhub Africa and Dr Izeduwa Derex Briggs – Program Officer, GREJ, Ford Foundation
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
Source: www.myjoyonline.com
