Deadline: 26 June 2026
CHEVS is a youth-led feminist collective dedicated to advancing LGBTQIA+ equality and gender justice across West Africa. Our mission is to mobilise and strengthen LGBTQIA+ communities for collective action toward achieving equality, freedom, and justice. Through movement building, advocacy, and narrative change, CHEVS works to dismantle oppressive systems and promote holistic and inclusive feminist futures.
About The Training
The Digital Defenders Training is designed to build the working capacity of LGBTQI+ digital defenders, grassroots organisations, and independent activists to organise, defend, and move safely in a digital environment that has been engineered against them.
The training equips participants with practical understanding and applied skills across four intersecting areas: digital security as everyday practice, AI literacy for defenders, Visibility and narrative as infrastructure and organising under hostile conditions. Beyond technical skill-building, the training places a strong emphasis
on developing trainers—participants who will carry capacity back into their own organisations, networks, and communities, rather than holding it as individual expertise. The curriculum is grounded in the lived realities of LGBTQI+ defenders in the region, including findings from CHEVS’s Algorithms of Violence research on platform-mediated harm against queer West Africans, and adapted to the specific legal, political, and digital conditions of each country in the series The digital defenders training will run as three in-country trainings in Nairobi | Abidjan | Lagos
Background
The advancement of digital technology has fundamentally reshaped what is possible for LGBTQI+ activism and visibility across Africa. Due to the growing physical and social hostility in the region, digital platforms have offered queer Africans the means to find each other and build the kinds of community that physical space had not always made room for. Movements have grown across borders, mutual aid networks have run on digital infrastructure, human rights documentation has scaled in ways previously unimaginable, and LGBTQI+ Africans have come of age telling their own stories rather than being spoken about by others. However, the same spaces that opened up these possibilities have become sites of concentrated harm. The digital environment in which LGBTQI+ defenders, grassroots organisations, and movements across Africa operate has become structurally hostile, with surveillance, both state and private, having moved from exception to routine. Platform-mediated outing, doxxing, and coordinated harassment have become permanent features of the operating landscape rather than outlier events. Furthermore, AI-generated content is accelerating the spread of Misinformation and disinformation beyond what fact-checkers can respond to, and anti-rights actors are growing more sophisticated in their use of platform amplification, misinformation,
disinformation, and algorithmic manipulation.
This moment calls for durable, contextual, peer-rooted capacity; capacity that survives contact with real organising conditions. One that treats LGBTQI+ community leaders and defenders as the architects of digital justice in their own contexts, and also builds the infrastructure needed for movement work to continue under this sustained pressure.
It is into this gap that CHEVS intervenes through the Digital Defenders Training series.
Training Objectives
Participants will gain:
- Practical digital security skills, including threat modelling, account and device hygiene, communications security, and incident response
- AI literacy for defenders — recognising and responding to AI-generated harassment, navigating platform-mediated harm, and evaluating AI tools for safe organisational use
- Skills for organising under hostile conditions, including movement security, coalition-building, and engagement with platforms, regulators,
- Tools and frameworks for training others within their own networks
- Access to a curated regional peer community of LGBTQI+ tech justice practitioners across three countries
- Exposure to peer learning across diverse African contexts
Programme Structure
The series will be delivered as three (3) in-country trainings, with each sharing a common core curriculum that is adapted to the political and digital conditions of each host country.
| City | Dates | Language |
| Nairobi | 29th July-2 August 2026 | English |
| Abidjan | 9-13 September 2026 | English with full French interpretation throughout |
| Lagos | 7th-11th October 2026 | English |
Across all three trainings, participants will:
- Build threat modelling and operational security capacity grounded in their day-to-day work
- Develop AI literacy specific to the threats LGBTQI+ defenders face in the region
- Strengthen skills for organising and movement work under hostile conditions
- Practise training others through peer-led and facilitator-supported sessions
- Begin building the peer relationships that will form the foundation of the Regional Virtual Network
Specific dates and venue details will be shared with selected participants only.
The Regional Virtual Network
Following each in-country training, all participating alumni will be brought into a Regional Virtual Network — a working community for ongoing exchange, peer support, and collective response across the three countries.
The network is designed as a sustained ecosystem rather than a one-off reunion. Through it, we aim to build a multiplier effect that strengthens movement infrastructure. Alumni will:
- Engage in facilitated sessions on emerging digital threats, AI developments, and platform shifts
- Participate in working groups on shared challenges, including platform accountability, electoral cycle threats, and AI-generated harassment
- Access ongoing technical and strategic support from CHEVS
- Build rapid information-sharing and peer mentorship pathways for incident response
- Develop the cross-country relationships that turn isolated defenders into a connected movement
The Regional Virtual Network is the connective tissue between the three in-country trainings and more countries in the future. We see this training as a long-term investment in regional tech justice leadership.
Eligibility
We invite applications from organisations & individuals actively engaged in advancing LGBTQI+ rights, organising, and movement work in the digital space within any of the host countries, including:
- LGBTQI+ human rights defenders, organisers, and movement actors with active casework or organising loads
- Staff and members of LGBTQI+, queer-led, grassroots organisations
- Independent activists
NB: for those applying as organisations, you will be required to nominate a staff member who would attend on your behalf if accepted. We recommend nominating members who lead workstreams related to the training
Applicants must demonstrate:
- A track record of active engagement in LGBTQI+ rights, defence, organising, or movement work
- Operational responsibility for digital practice, current or emerging, in their organisation, network, or community
- Capacity and willingness to apply learning within their own work and share it onward with others
Applications are open to individuals & Organisations based in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria only. We are working to add more countries in the future. Particular consideration will be extended to applicants working outside the big cities where these trainings will be held, in organisations without dedicated digital security or comms infrastructure, or at the intersection of LGBTQI+ rights and other forms of marginalisation with the LGBTQI+ context, including disability, rural, refugee and migrant, sex worker, and trans-led contexts.
How to Apply
Interested applicants should click HERE to apply. Deadline: 26th June 2026.
Note
The training will be conducted in English for all countries, with full French translation in Côte d’Ivoire. Travel, accommodation, meals, and training materials will be covered for all selected participants.
For further enquiries, please contact opportunities@chevs.org.
Additional consideration will be extended to applicants working in contexts approaching high-stakes political moments in 2026–2027, including elections, legislative reform processes, and ongoing legal proceedings on LGBTQI+ rights, freedom of association, and bodily autonomy.