CIVIC SPACE IN WEST AFRICA: Trends, Threats & Futures – 2nd Edition

In 2023, Spaces for Change | S4C published the first analysis of civic space trends in West Africa, titled CIVIC SPACE IN WEST AFRICA: TRENDS, THREATS, AND FUTURES, based on the data aggregated from the Closing Spaces Database, accessible at www.closingspaces.org. Since 2017, the Database has tracked incidents of civic space closures, especially crackdowns on civic participation rights, across the West African countries, namely: Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger Republic, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo.

Incidents tracked are grouped into seven broad categories, namely (1) freedom of expression, (2) press freedoms, (3) digital closures and surveillance, (4) freedom of assembly and association, (5) anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism measures, (6) political restrictions, and (7) anti-NGO bills and restrictive regulations. The Database provides freely accessible information and evidence of constraints on civic space in the subregion in terms of real numbers, identity and gender of victims, locations, the rights category most violated, the perpetrators, and the tactics used to enforce restrictions.

This new report analyzes incidents tracked in the Database between July 2022 and December 2024, as a follow-up to the first edition published in 2023, which analyzed incidences tracked in the Database between May 2016 and July 2022. The Database tracked 639 incidents across West Africa between 2017-2022 and a total of 801 incidents between 2022-2024, revealing a sustained and coordinated pattern of restrictions largely driven by state authorities and implemented through legal, administrative, judicial, and coercive means.