Sub-Saharan Africa is home to some of the world’s most restricted civic space conditions, where people are denied their rights to organise to fight for a common goal and take part in democratic dissent.
The region is known for its authoritarian leaders who impose a combination of legal and practical constraints on the full enjoyment of fundamental rights. The most common civic space restrictions in the past years have been marked with excessive use of force by security forces against protesters, attacks on journalists, disruption of protests and censorship. A free and vibrant media and civil society are key agents of democracy and therefore often the first to be restricted.
