The month of March 2026 revealed a growing trend of legal and physical pitfalls that continue to ensnare journalists and content creators. Across Ghana, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Benin, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, journalists and content creators faced arrests, physical attacks, lengthy prison sentences, and suffered the impact of sweeping regulatory actions.
Journalists were arrested for their legitimate coverage, assaulted in their line of duty, and sentenced to years in prison for publications deemed offensive to state interests. In Burkina Faso, the trend of abduction of critical voices took a tragic turn after the passing of a citizen as he was being taken into custody.
Media outlets were also suspended by regulators, with bans extending to individual journalists. At the legislative level, a newly enacted law in Senegal and a proposed law in Liberia tolled alarm bells of criminal penalties for speech-related offences that could have dire consequences on the hard-won gains for press freedom in these countries.
The civic space showed signs of further contraction, with the legal ordeal of an opposition flagbearer aspirant in Sierra Leone, Zainab Sheriff, who was denied bail nine times, raising questions of selective justice.
In total, March witnessed eight violations, with five targeting journalists, while the remaining three targeted a content creator, a news website and a citizen. The documented cases of freedom of expression violations were, however, a marginal decrease compared to the violations documented in the preceding month (February), which recorded 11 incidents of freedom of expression violations.
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