By Muhammed Bello Buhari, Programme Intern - Learning & Communications at CIVICUS
Democracy today is shaped as much online as it is offline. Protests start in encrypted chats; debates unfold in comments, and discourse is filtered through algorithms. The promise of the internet was clear: a space where anyone could speak, organise, and be heard. But that promise is fading. Across continents, the voices that most need digital space — youth movements, feminist networks, Indigenous groups, journalists, and grassroots organisers — are being silenced not by force, but by shutdowns, surveillance, censorship, and biased algorithms. What was once a tool for liberation is now increasingly a site of repression.
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Photo credit: A Kenyan protester. Image by Emily Onyango on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
