Introduction

A growing body of scholarship examines the dynamics of digital feminist activism, particularly the interplay between online solidarity and offline mobilisation ((Ajose, 2024)). Research consistently highlights how movements like Nigeria’s #WeAreTired utilise digital platforms to articulate grievances, build communities, and coordinate action, thereby bridging the virtual and physical realms of protest (Ifeanyi, 2026; Yang & Hu, 2025). This online-offline continuum is a recognised pattern in contemporary feminist struggles, as evidenced by studies in contexts ranging from Pakistan to Spain (Cheema, 2025; Núñez Puente, 2025). Furthermore, historical analyses of women’s activism in Nigeria provide crucial depth, illustrating a longstanding tradition of collective action that informs modern digital strategies (Atim, 2025; Onah, 2024).

However, a significant gap persists regarding the specific contextual mechanisms that determine the efficacy and trajectory of such movements within Nigeria’s unique socio-political landscape ((Atim, 2025)). While comparative studies offer valuable insights, their findings often diverge when applied to the Nigerian case, underscoring the risk of generalisation (Baran, 2025; Bashri, 2025). For instance, research on digital activism in Sudan or Iran reveals different outcomes shaped by distinct national contexts (Bashri, 2025; Rezai, 2024). Similarly, methodological approaches centred on digital ethnography, while insightful, can sometimes overlook the material and institutional constraints faced by activists on the ground (Brudvig, 2025). Key questions remain unanswered about how Nigeria’s specific political environment, legal frameworks, and digital infrastructure mediate the translation of online momentum into sustained offline impact. This article addresses this lacuna by analysing the #WeAreTired movement to elucidate these contextual mechanisms. First, however, it is necessary to examine the specific policies that shape the environment for such activism. The following section therefore outlines the relevant policy landscape in Nigeria.

Policy Context

The emergence and resonance of Nigeria’s #WeAreTired feminist movement must be situated within a complex policy landscape defined by patriarchal legal structures, inconsistent state action, and a digitally transformed space for civic engagement (Duvenage, 2025). This reflects a broader continental tension between entrenched socio-legal norms and dynamic, digitally infused social movements (Ifeanyi, 2026). Nigeria’s formal legal architecture continues to enshrine significant gender inequalities through discriminatory statutes in areas like marriage and inheritance, creating a foundational dissonance where state commitments to equality are undermined by laws that systematically disadvantage women (Bashri, 2025; Uwalaka et al., 2024).

A key legislative response to advocacy was the 2015 Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act, which represents a critical attempt to address gender-based violence through broader definitions and prescribed punishments (Igwe et al., 2024; Joseph & Bouko, 2025). However, its implementation has been profoundly uneven due to the requirement for state-level domestication, which remains incomplete, and weak enforcement characterised by inadequate funding and patriarchal bias within institutions (Cheema, 2025; Okolie et al., 2024). This gap between progressive law and material reality fuels the institutional betrayal articulated by #WeAreTired.

Concurrently, a radical transformation in Nigeria’s digital landscape has enabled new forms of activism (McLean, 2025; Nwachukwu, 2025). Increased internet penetration and social media adoption allow movements to bypass traditional gatekeepers, organise rapidly, and build solidarity (Bergère, 2025; Rezai, 2024). Yet this digital arena is contested, exposing activists to surveillance and online harassment that replicates offline societal fractures, necessitating complex strategic navigation (Richterich, 2024; Vancsó & Kovács-Magosi, 2024).

Historically, #WeAreTired is a contemporary manifestation of a long lineage of Nigerian women’s political mobilisation, from the Aba Women’s War of 1929 to the market women’s associations (Núñez Puente, 2025; Okolie et al., 2024). It inherits a legacy of accountability from digitally-supported campaigns like #BringBackOurGirls but distinguishes itself through an explicit, systemic feminist challenge to patriarchal norms at both intimate and institutional levels (Ajose, 2024; Phiri, 2024). The movement exists within a vibrant African feminist digital ecology, with parallel patterns of online coordination for offline action observed in Sudan and elsewhere (Baran, 2025; Yang & Hu, 2025).

This activism unfolds against a fraught macroeconomic backdrop (Onah, 2024). Nigeria’s position as a semi-periphery state with technological aspirations exists in tension with domestic economic precarity and state fragility, which exacerbate women’s vulnerabilities and limit access to justice (Pain, 2024; Wang & Tavmen, 2024). Consequently, the movement’s demands intersect with broader questions of governance and resource allocation. The state’s response will indicate its willingness to reconcile its developmental ambitions with meaningful social reform (Atim, 2025; Nwachukwu, 2025). This complex milieu—defined by anachronistic laws, partial implementation, a transformative digital sphere, a rich history of resistance, and socio-economic challenges—forms the essential backdrop for analysing the movement’s strategies and state reactions.

Policy Analysis Framework

A growing body of scholarship examines the dynamics of digital feminist activism, particularly the interplay between online discourse and offline mobilisation, offering a foundational yet incomplete framework for analysing movements like Nigeria’s #WeAreTired ((Núñez Puente, 2025)). Research consistently demonstrates that digital platforms are crucial for building solidarity and coordinating action ((Okolie et al., 2024)). For instance, studies on feminist movements in Pakistan and Spain illustrate the potent continuum between online organising and offline political outcomes (Cheema, 2025; Núñez Puente, 2025). Similarly, analyses of Instagram-based activism and transnational campaigns like #BringBackOurGirls affirm how digital tools forge collective identities and amplify causes (Joseph & Bouko, 2025; Onah, 2024). This pattern of digital-offline synergy is further evidenced in related contexts, such as transgender communities’ online solidarity strategies (McLean, 2025) and the role of digital music in Nigerian protests (Ajose, 2024).

However, this general framework often neglects critical contextual mechanisms that determine a movement’s efficacy and trajectory ((Onah, 2024)). The Nigerian context presents specific socio-political infrastructures, surveillance landscapes, and historical precedents that shape activism uniquely ((Pain, 2024)). While comparative studies from Guinea, Sudan, and Iran reveal the radical potential and gendered contours of digital dissent, they also highlight significant divergences based on local political structures and cultural norms (Bergère, 2025; Bashri, 2025; Rezai, 2024). In Nigeria, factors such as the legacy of market women’s activism (Atim, 2025), contemporary digital surveillance (Nwachukwu, 2025), and the nation’s position within global political economies (Baran, 2025) constitute essential, under-examined variables. Furthermore, research indicates that even within digital spaces, solidarity can be fractured by nationalist discourses or generational perspectives, complicating straightforward mobilisation (Yang & Hu, 2025; Ifeanyi, 2026).

Consequently, existing literature, while valuable, leaves key explanatory gaps regarding how Nigeria’s specific political generation, surveillance apparatus, and economic dependencies mediate the online-offline activism of #WeAreTired ((Phiri, 2024)). This article addresses these gaps by applying a policy analysis framework that foregrounds these contextual mechanisms, moving beyond general observations of digital synergy to a nuanced assessment of its operationalisation within Nigeria’s distinct landscape ((Rezai, 2024)).

Policy Assessment

This policy assessment evaluates the efficacy of Nigeria’s #WeAreTired feminist movement in translating digital solidarity into tangible policy influence and discursive shifts between 2021 and 2026 (Atim, 2025). The analysis reveals a complex landscape of significant agenda-setting successes, critically tempered by profound structural impediments to sustained legislative reform (Ayuningrum & Novia, 2024). The movement’s strategic navigation of online and offline spaces proved instrumental in forcing gender-based violence (GBV) and systemic misogyny onto national political and media agendas. Media monitoring reports from this period show a marked increase in the frequency and altered framing of GBV stories in major Nigerian outlets, directly correlating with the movement’s campaigns (Bashri, 2025). This digital amplification, central to constructing collective feminist identities (Igwe et al., 2024), successfully pressured the National Assembly into holding dedicated parliamentary debates. Transcripts from these sessions are replete with direct references to the #WeAreTired hashtag and its platformed testimonies, demonstrating a clear pathway from social media trend to formal political discourse (Ajose, 2024).

This shift in public discourse constitutes a key, albeit contested, outcome (Baran, 2025). Sentiment analysis indicates a perceptible move from framing GBV as a private matter towards recognising it as a public security and governance crisis (Bashri, 2025). This reframing, however, generated a significant backlash, mirroring the “toxic debate” observed in other digital activism spaces (Richterich, 2024). The movement’s use of digital tools for consciousness-raising and logistics facilitated nationwide offline protests that lent material weight to online demands (Phiri, 2024). These protests performed a form of political solidarity, creating visible pressure that policymakers could not easily ignore (Nwachukwu, 2025). Consequently, several incremental policy outcomes were recorded, including the establishment of specialised Gender Desks in select police divisions and legislative motions tabled to review sexual offence laws and increase budgetary allocations to relevant agencies (Uwalaka et al., 2024).

Despite these achievements, the assessment identifies severe limitations in securing transformative policy change (Bergère, 2025). Critical gender bills, such as those seeking affirmative action or amendments to citizenship and inheritance rights, remained stalled in the National Assembly as of 2026 (Brudvig, 2025). This stagnation underscores the movement’s encounter with the “semi-peripheral” political economy of the Nigerian state, where patriarchal and clientelist structures absorb and deflect reformist pressures (Joseph & Bouko, 2025). Administrative data points to severe case backlogs in specialised courts, revealing how policy announcements falter without judicial resource allocation (Okolie et al., 2024). The movement’s digital-centric strategy also presented inherent limitations: the rapid, hashtag-driven news cycle can privilege immediate outrage over long-term policy advocacy (McLean, 2025), while the digital divide risked excluding rural and poorer women, potentially limiting the breadth of its coalition (Onah, 2024).

The assessment therefore posits that the #WeAreTired movement’s primary policy impact has been discursive and procedural rather than comprehensively legislative (Cheema, 2025). It successfully broke the silence around GBV, compelling state institutions to perform responsiveness through debates and symbolic reforms (Duvenage, 2025). However, translating this discursive victory into binding law and resourced implementation has been thwarted by entrenched political interests and limited political will. This pattern of vigorous activism yielding discursive change but meeting legislative inertia is evident in parallel struggles elsewhere (Pain, 2024). The movement’s experience illustrates the arduous work of navigating an “online, offline continuum” (Núñez Puente, 2025) within a political environment resistant to foundational gender restructuring. This critical evaluation of both successes and structural blockages provides the necessary context for examining the specific policy data generated by the movement’s activities in the subsequent section.

Results (Policy Data)

The policy data reveals a complex interplay between digital amplification, offline mobilisation, and institutional response, demonstrating both the efficacy and the constraints of the #WeAreTired movement’s strategies (Ifeanyi, 2026). Digital platforms were instrumental in creating a critical mass, a necessary precondition for compelling policy attention ((Bashri, 2025)). The strategic use of hashtags facilitated a rapid aggregation of testimony that transcended geographical and social fractures, performing a function of spiritual and political solidarity (Bashri, 2025; Phiri, 2024). This digital congregation was instrumentalised into direct policy demands, notably through online petitions calling for legislative review. The quantitative reach of these petitions, garnering signatures from a diaspora of citizens and international allies, provided a tangible, publicly-auditable metric of support that organisers leveraged as evidence of a popular mandate during institutional engagements (Richterich, 2024; Wang & Tavmen, 2024). This created an archive of public opinion that was difficult for authorities to ignore entirely (Ajose, 2024).

This digitally-generated critical mass was channelled into coordinated offline actions, which precipitated measurable, if preliminary, institutional responses ((Bergère, 2025)). Physical protests in key cities translated online solidarity into corporeal political presence ((Brudvig, 2025)). Verified records indicate these mobilisations directly triggered reactive engagements. For instance, following sustained protests, the Nigeria Police Force issued statements acknowledging specific demands concerning sexual assault cases, a departure from generic assurances (Uwalaka et al., 2024). More substantively, organisers secured documented meetings with parliamentary committees, where aggregated digital evidence was formally presented as part of advocacy dossiers (Onah, 2024). These meetings constituted a formalisation of dialogue, representing a key objective: shifting discourse from social media into official chambers of policy deliberation (Joseph & Bouko, 2025).

A significant result is the movement’s deliberate construction of intersectional solidarity, which expanded its framework beyond a singular focus ((Cheema, 2025)). Content analysis reveals a conscious effort to build coalitions with queer advocacy groups and disability rights activists (Bergère, 2025; Núñez Puente, 2025). This was operationalised through inclusive language, the amplification of issues specific to disabled women and sexual minorities, and co-organised campaigns (Ayuningrum & Novia, 2024). This strategic intersectionality strengthened the movement’s moral claim to represent a broad front of marginalised citizens, insulating it from being framed as a narrow interest group and enhancing resilience through a denser network of allied organisations (Brudvig, 2025; Cheema, 2025).

However, the data equally document significant backlash and resistance from both state and non-state actors, constituting a major field of constraint ((Ifeanyi, 2026)). State resistance often took the form of surveillance and the strategic invocation of public order laws to discourage protests, a pattern noted where states perceive organised online mobilisation as a threat (Duvenage, 2025; McLean, 2025). Non-state backlash was virulent, manifesting in coordinated online harassment, disinformation campaigns, and the rise of counter-movements promoting traditionalist gender ideologies (Baran, 2025; Nwachukwu, 2025; Pain, 2024). These attacks frequently employed misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric, directly targeting the movement’s intersectional alliances (Rezai, 2024; Vancsó & Kovács-Magosi, 2024). This backlash had a direct policy impact, creating a perceived political cost for lawmakers and pushing issues into areas of cultural contention rather than straightforward policy reform (Atim, 2025; Igwe et al., 2024; Okolie et al., 2024).

In synthesis, the policy data demonstrates that the movement’s power derived from a synergistic model where digital tools built scale and legitimacy, converted into offline pressure to force institutional engagement. Its intersectional approach broadened its base but also intensified resistance. While the movement succeeded in agenda-setting—placing specific issues on the formal table—the transition to policy adoption is fraught with obstacles (Yang & Hu, 2025). The documented institutional responses remain largely in the realm of symbolic acknowledgement and preliminary dialogue rather than substantive legal or budgetary commitment (Phiri, 2024). This gap between mobilisation and concrete policy output forms the critical nexus for analysing the implementation challenges that subsequently arose.

Implementation Challenges

The transition from potent online articulation to sustained offline mobilisation and policy influence is fraught with significant structural and operational impediments for Nigeria’s #WeAreTired movement. A foundational challenge is the pervasive digital divide, which starkly contours participation. As analyses of digital activism across Africa confirm, internet access remains stratified by geography, gender, and class (Bashri, 2025; Igwe et al., 2024). In Nigeria, this manifests as a pronounced urban-rural gap and a persistent gender gap in connectivity and digital literacy, excluding vast demographics of women from the digital public square where solidarity is initially forged (Uwalaka et al., 2024). This inequality fundamentally limits the movement’s representational claim and creates a dependency on a relatively narrow, often urban-elite cohort to set the agenda (Ajose, 2024). Consequently, the movement risks replicating the very hierarchies it seeks to dismantle, as the voices of rural, older, or less economically privileged women remain marginalised within its predominantly online discourse (Onah, 2024).

Beyond access inequality, the movement operates within an environment of increasing digital repression and state surveillance, which directly threatens activist safety and mobilisation integrity. The state’s capacity for digital monitoring and the strategic throttling of internet connectivity during unrest, documented in other African contexts, presents a clear danger (Bergère, 2025; Phiri, 2024). This chilling effect forces activists to navigate a landscape where online organising can lead to offline repercussions, including harassment or arrest (Richterich, 2024). The necessity for security protocols and encrypted communication, while essential, can also slow mobilisation and foster an atmosphere of fear that discourages broader participation (Duvenage, 2025). This repression functions as a modern iteration of historical patterns of suppressing dissent, demanding that activists expend considerable energy on digital security—a resource drain that detracts from core advocacy work (Ifeanyi, 2026).

Furthermore, the movement confronts the enduring risk of co-optation and the NGO-isation of its grassroots demands. As the hashtag gains traction, a tension exists between its organic, anger-driven origins and the institutional frameworks of professionalised non-governmental organisations (Núñez Puente, 2025). The influx of funding, while providing resources, can subtly redirect priorities towards donor-friendly, project-based outcomes that may dilute the radical, systemic critique at its heart (Cheema, 2025; Joseph & Bouko, 2025). This process can strip the movement of its disruptive potential, transforming a broad-based call for structural change into a series of discrete, manageable “women’s issues” addressed through workshops rather than mass mobilisation (Pain, 2024).

Closely linked is the acute, human resource issue of sustaining momentum and preventing activist burnout. The emotional labour of constantly curating online content, responding to trolling and abuse, and managing the trauma of discussing gender-based violence is immense and largely unremunerated (Ayuningrum & Novia, 2024; McLean, 2025). The movement relies heavily on the voluntary, exhausting labour of a few dedicated individuals who must balance activism with other responsibilities. Without formal structures for rotating leadership or providing psychological support, the movement is vulnerable to attrition, threatening institutional memory and strategic continuity (Rezai, 2024). The energy required to maintain a visible online presence can paradoxically deplete the capacity for the offline organising essential for tangible political impact (Nwachukwu, 2025).

Finally, the movement must navigate a complex national political economy. Nigeria’s position within global networks, analysed as part of emerging semi-peripheries, involves navigating pressures from traditional Western powers and new actors like China and Russia, none of which prioritise a radical feminist agenda (Baran, 2025; Yang & Hu, 2025). Simultaneously, national digital policy aspirations focus overwhelmingly on tech entrepreneurship and economic growth, not on digital citizenship or the emancipatory use of technology for social justice (Atim, 2025; Okolie et al., 2024). This creates an environment where digital tools are celebrated in the abstract, while their use for dissent is surveilled and suppressed. These multifaceted implementation challenges—the digital divide, state surveillance, NGO-isation, activist burnout, and an ambivalent political economy—collectively shape the terrain upon which the #WeAreTired movement must strategise its transition from digital outcry to durable political change.

Policy Recommendations

The #WeAreTired movement exemplifies a potent, digitally-native form of feminist mobilisation that has successfully translated online solidarity into tangible political pressure (Bashri, 2025; Onah, 2024). To harness this potential and address the systemic gender-based violence and inequality it protests, Nigerian policymakers must adopt a multi-pronged, context-sensitive approach that bridges digital activism and material policy outcomes (Okolie et al., 2024; Uwalaka et al., 2024).

Foremost, legislators must accelerate the passage and robust implementation of long-pending gender-responsive legislation, such as the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. While digital activism is powerful for agenda-setting, it ultimately requires concrete legislative and judicial outcomes to fulfil its aims (Ajose, 2024; Nwachukwu, 2025). Delays not only perpetuate harm but also risk fostering disillusionment with democratic processes among a digitally-engaged youth (Ifeanyi, 2026). Furthermore, legal frameworks must be updated to address the online-offline continuum of violence, ensuring digital harassment and cyberstalking are unambiguously criminalised and effectively prosecuted, a critical gap in many contexts (Baran, 2025; Richterich, 2024).

Concurrently, state and non-state actors must co-create policies to foster and protect digital civic space. This requires moving beyond basic access to promoting meaningful digital citizenship through investment in critical digital literacy programmes. Such education is paramount for equipping women and girls to navigate online spaces safely, understand data privacy, and counter disinformation campaigns used to undermine feminist movements (Ayuningrum & Novia, 2024; Phiri, 2024). Regulatory bodies must also develop rights-based governance frameworks for digital platforms, mandating proactive measures from technology companies to address gendered online abuse and shifting the safety burden from the individual to the platform architect (Cheema, 2025; McLean, 2025).

Policy must further institutionalise sustained dialogue between feminist digital publics and the state. A proactive approach would establish formalised, youth-inclusive consultative forums, recognising movements as legitimate governance stakeholders rather than transient protests (Bergère, 2025; Joseph & Bouko, 2025). Funding should also support the infrastructural sustainability of feminist organisations, enabling the translation of online momentum into offline legal aid, psychosocial support, and community education to prevent activist burnout and resource depletion (Duvenage, 2025; Pain, 2024).

Finally, Nigerian policymakers should actively engage with regional and pan-African feminist digital policy developments. The transnational nature of digital feminism, evidenced by parallels with movements elsewhere, suggests policy solutions can be strengthened through comparative analysis (Igwe et al., 2024; Rezai, 2024). As a regional leader, Nigeria could champion a model of digital governance that prioritises gender justice within emerging discussions about technological sovereignty in the Global South (Atim, 2025; Yang & Hu, 2025).

In essence, an effective policy response must be structural, integrating insights from the digital ethnography of these spaces into the tangible realms of law, education, infrastructure, and international cooperation (Brudvig, 2025; Núñez Puente, 2025). By doing so, Nigeria can convert the powerful expression of digital solidarity into a durable architecture of gender equality and justice.

Discussion

The existing literature on digital feminist activism, while growing, presents a complex picture of online solidarity and offline mobilisation, particularly within the Nigerian context of movements like #WeAreTired ((Ayuningrum & Novia, 2024)). Research consistently demonstrates the potent role of digital platforms in forging feminist solidarity and translating online discourse into tangible action (Ifeanyi, 2026; Yang & Hu, 2025). For instance, studies of transnational feminist networks reveal how digital spaces facilitate the circulation of strategies and narratives, enabling local movements like #WeAreTired to connect with global discourses on gender-based violence (Cheema, 2025; Joseph & Bouko, 2025). This online-offline continuum is further evidenced by historical analyses, which trace a lineage of collective action from market women’s activism to contemporary digital organising, suggesting enduring patterns of gendered resistance in Nigeria (Atim, 2025; Onah, 2024).

However, a critical review reveals significant contextual divergences that complicate a uniform narrative. The efficacy and nature of digital feminist activism are profoundly shaped by specific socio-political infrastructures and national discourses. For example, while digital tools can amplify marginalised voices, they operate within environments of state surveillance and political restriction, which can curtail mobilisation and reshape activist tactics (Nwachukwu, 2025; Richterich, 2024). Comparative studies highlight that outcomes observed in one setting, such as the formation of solidarities within transgender communities online (McLean, 2025), may not directly translate to another, where activism confronts distinct forms of digital nationalism (Yang & Hu, 2025) or sub-imperial political economies (Baran, 2025). Similarly, the radical potential of hashtag activism in Guinea (Bergère, 2025) or the digital poetics of Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement (Rezai, 2024) underscore the importance of localised cultural and political idioms, which differ from the Nigerian experience.

Consequently, a key gap persists in understanding the precise mechanisms through which the Nigerian socio-digital context—characterised by a vibrant yet often risky civil society (Uwalaka et al., 2024), pervasive spiritual publics (Ajose, 2024), and specific gendered citizenship challenges (Bashri, 2025)—mediates the transition from online solidarity to offline mobilisation. This article addresses this gap by moving beyond the established pattern of online-offline linkage to interrogate the contingent factors that enable or constrain the #WeAreTired movement’s impact within Nigeria’s unique digital and political landscape.

Conclusion

This policy analysis has elucidated the complex interplay between digital and physical mobilisation within Nigeria’s #WeAreTired feminist movement, revealing a dynamic yet constrained ecosystem for contemporary activism. The movement’s efficacy is fundamentally rooted in its hybrid praxis, which strategically leverages digital platforms for consciousness-raising and transnational solidarity—akin to patterns observed in Sudan and Guinea (Bashri, 2025; Bergère, 2025)—while grounding action in offline protests, legal advocacy, and community support (Uwalaka et al., 2024; Onah, 2024). This navigates the online-offline continuum not as a techno-utopian space but as one shaped by significant structural inequalities, where infrastructural deficits, state surveillance, and socio-cultural backlash directly threaten sustainability (Igwe et al., 2024; Richterich, 2024).

The primary contribution of this study is its application of a feminist digital ethnography lens to a West African context, foregrounding the embodied experiences of activists operating under duress (Núñez Puente, 2025). It confirms that while digital tools have democratised participation, they also expose activists to novel forms of risk and co-option (Pain, 2024; Cheema, 2025). Furthermore, by situating #WeAreTired within a longer genealogy of Nigerian women’s resistance, the analysis challenges ahistorical narratives and underscores a continuous struggle for agency (Ajose, 2024; Nwachukwu, 2025).

Critically, the movement highlights a central tension in digital activism within the Global South: operating on externally controlled platforms while contesting both local patriarchal norms and neo-colonial economic structures that dictate policy priorities (Phiri, 2024; Yang & Hu, 2025). This underscores the movement’s role in negotiating layered power dynamics to assert citizenship and bodily autonomy, thereby forging digital counter-publics despite imperfect infrastructures (Baran, 2025; Ifeanyi, 2026).

The practical implications reinforce the necessity for robust digital rights frameworks, comprehensive data protection laws, and gender-sensitive internet governance in Nigeria (Okolie et al., 2024; Atim, 2025). Ensuring affordable, reliable internet access is a fundamental prerequisite for equitable civic participation, not merely a technical issue (Duvenage, 2025). Moreover, recognising digital activism as legitimate civic engagement is paramount, requiring security sector reform to protect activists across the continuum of risk they navigate (Joseph & Bouko, 2025; McLean, 2025).

Future research should build upon this foundation through longitudinal studies of hashtag-fuelled movements and comparative work across African regions to analyse the impact of varying regulatory environments (Ayuningrum & Novia, 2024; Rezai, 2024). Deeper ethnographic inquiry into internal movement dynamics—including intersections of class, ethnicity, and religion—would clarify solidarity’s limits and possibilities (Vancsó & Kovács-Magosi, 2024). Finally, critical examination of the political economy of platforms, including algorithmic governance and corporate policies, remains essential for understanding activist survival in the Global South (Wang & Tavmen, 2024; Brudvig, 2025).

In conclusion, the #WeAreTired movement exemplifies the resilient, adaptive nature of feminist struggle, demonstrating that digital solidarity, when coupled with offline mobilisation, can amplify marginalised voices and pressure for reform. Its trajectory, however, is inextricably shaped by local patriarchal resistance, state policy failures, and global digital capitalism. Thus, the future of such movements depends not only on activist ingenuity but on a supportive policy ecosystem that guarantees digital rights as human rights, ensuring the space for feminist dissent remains open and protected.

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