BY: Mustapha Lawal
What once seemed like online noise has evolved into a powerful weapon capable of shaming survivors, protecting abusers, and pushing women out of public and private spaces.
While gender advocates have long emphasised the physical, psychological and economic dimensions of GBV, the digital layer, misinformation, deepfakes, online smear campaigns and identity-based disinformation are still treated in many countries as separate “technology” issues. But the stories emerging from Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria and beyond reveal that misinformation is not a parallel threat. It is woven into the very fabric of violence, enabling, escalating and normalising harm.
How Falsehood Becomes Violence
In Nairobi, researchers from the Collaborative Centre for Gender and Development and the University of Nairobi’s WEE Hub uncovered just how deeply digital misinformation is shaping young people’s experiences of violence. Their UNFPA-supported study found that nearly 90 percent of students in tertiary institutions had witnessed technology-facilitated gender-based violence, while almost 40 percent had experienced it personally. Non-consensual image sharing and viral rumours about women’s sexual behaviour were among the most common forms. The report paints a picture of environments where fabricated stories spread so quickly that survivors often retreat into silence, convinced that seeking help would only deepen the humiliation.
These patterns are not confined to campuses. Kenya’s bustling influencer economy, where women are increasingly visible as creators, journalists and public commentators, has become another frontline. The Dada Disinfo project by Nendo analysed more than fifty thousand posts and documented how female creators endure defamation, impersonation and digitally altered images designed specifically to shame or discredit them. Some creators told researchers privately that false claims about their sexuality or “immoral behaviour” not only affected their work but also strained their relationships and mental health, trapping them in a cycle where misinformation bleeds into emotional or intimate-partner violence.
When Elections Become a Battleground for Gendered Lies
In Tanzania, the link between misinformation and GBV became stark during the run-up to the 2024 local government elections. Observers from civil society flagged a wave of AI-generated and manipulated videos targeting political actors. Women bore the brunt of these attacks. According to reporting by The Citizen, the false videos were designed to erode credibility by sexualising women candidates or depicting them in compromising scenarios they had never been part of. Also, in the weeks leading up to the November 8, 2025, Anambra state gubernatorial elections, the state’s two female candidates faced a relentless and coordinated wave of online harassment and gendered disinformation, highlighting the growing threat of technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) in Nigerian politics. With laws lagging behind digital innovation, many of these deepfakes circulated unchecked, creating social hostility that spilt offline into harassment and threats against the targeted women.
A New Normal of Violent Manipulation
In South Africa, Sonke Gender Justice has described image-based sexual abuse, particularly digitally manipulated images, as a “new normal”. Their work documents how victims struggle not only with public shame but also with the fact that digital harm multiplies without boundaries. A harasser does not need to know the victim personally; a fake image can be created by anyone online, shared rapidly, and used as evidence in smear campaigns or in threats that spill into offline intimidation.
UNESCO offers a sobering, personal view of how impersonation becomes a form of psychological violence. South African young woman Phemelo Mashweshwe recounted waking up to find that an entire Instagram profile, her name, her photos, and her life had been cloned by an unknown perpetrator. Her images were lifted within minutes each time she changed her picture, leaving her in a constant state of fear and hypervigilance, as if a digital stalker hovered over every post she made.
Extortion, Suicide and Transnational Networks
The dangers of misinformation-fuelled digital abuse are not confined to national borders. International reporting (such as CNN coverage) has traced several Nigeria-linked sextortion rings responsible for driving victims, many of them young boys and men, into suicide after criminals used manipulated images or fake identities to blackmail them. According to U.S. Department of Justice releases and CNN investigations, these networks often relied on fabricated screenshots and identity fraud, weaponising shame to extract money. What begins as digital deception frequently escalates into life-threatening harm, revealing how misinformation enables criminal GBV across borders.
Women Journalists and the Cost of Speaking Up
Female journalists in Nigeria have also become a major target of gendered misinformation and hate campaigns. UNESCO and the International Centre for Journalists found in a joint study that Nigerian women reporters face disproportionately high levels of online harassment, with many noting that digital abuse often comes paired with threats of physical and sexual violence. Several Nigerian journalists reported receiving manipulated images and fabricated allegations of sexual misconduct intended to discredit their reporting or silence their activism.
A Continent-Wide Pattern
From campuses to elections, from newsrooms to social media timelines, the pattern is unmistakable. Falsehood is becoming a form of violence, whether it appears as a deepfake meant to destroy someone’s reputation, a rumour circulated to justify intimate-partner abuse, or an impersonation account used for harassment and extortion.
In each case, misinformation fuels gendered harm by creating climates of distrust, shame, hostility and fear. And in each case, the violence is not confined to the screen. It alters relationships, reputations, careers and, in extreme circumstances, lives.
As the Globe engages in another 16 Days campaign, there is an urgent need to recognise misinformation as a direct driver of GBV rather than a distant, digital inconvenience. The stories emerging across the continent illustrate that until societies confront the lies that justify violence, the violence itself will persist.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second part of a four-part series on the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
Habeeb Adisa
