Abideen Opeyemi OLASUPO

More than 1,000 women applied for just 20 places in BBYDI’s Space for Her fellowship in 2022. That response showed how many women wanted an opportunity to prepare for political leadership. The fellows have since taken on roles across politics, public service and student leadership. Rukayat Shittu won a seat in the Kwara State House of Assembly, becoming its youngest member. Other fellows pursued a federal legislative candidacy, joined Kwara’s electoral commission, became a student union vice-president at the University of Ilorin, secured a YALI grant and participated in Yiaga Africa’s organising institute. Now, with support from the Colmena Fund, we’re bringing Space for Her 2.0 to Osun. The three-month intensive fellowship will support women political leaders and aspirants with training in civic leadership, digital safety and public communication, followed by year-round alumni mentorship. It is non-partisan and open to women across political parties, including those without a party affiliation. This support will also help us expand and retrain KEMI, our WhatsApp-based HerSafeSpace chatbot, to provide timely information and referrals for women facing violence before, during and after elections. Alongside this, we’ll strengthen our work to counter gendered disinformation used to discredit women in public life. Women need access to leadership opportunities and support to navigate the abuse that can come with stepping forward. We’ll share more soon, including eligibility requirements and how to apply. This work was made possible through the support of the Colmena Fund, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. #SpaceForHer #WomenInPolitics #BBYDI #Osun #ColmenaFund

When a girl’s education is interrupted by marriage, pregnancy or motherhood, the support she receives at home can determine if she returns to school. Traditional and religious leaders can influence that response because families already seek their guidance on important community matters. Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative visited traditional leaders in Makarfi, Kubau and Soba as part of our early relationship-building for the Faith and Tradition for Girls’ Education Project. In Makarfi, we met Hakimi Adamu Abdullahi, Suliki Zazzau. He welcomed the project and spoke about how engaging community leaders could encourage more parents to educate their daughters. Our discussions focused on the influence traditional rulers have within families and communities. We explored how their monthly council meetings with district and ward heads can create space for conversations about keeping girls in school and supporting those who want to return after an interruption. These visits begin a longer process. BBYDI is building a Community of Practice on girl-child education that will bring traditional rulers and religious leaders together as advocates. We will test this model in Kaduna State, learn from its implementation and adapt it for other parts of Nigeria. The traditional rulers will also form part of the Kaduna Faith and Traditional Leaders Coalition for Girl-Child Education. Through the coalition, members will use their monthly council meetings to advocate for the re-enactment of the Child Rights Law and other measures that protect girls’ right to education. Coalition members will also co-create a Public Charter and Terms of Reference. These documents will set out their shared commitments, responsibilities and approach to advocating for girls’ education across Kaduna State. The goal is to turn trusted leadership into organised and sustained action for every girl who wants to begin, continue or return to education. The Faith and Tradition for Girls’ Education Project is implemented by Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative with support from the @MalalaFund #FaithAndTraditionForGirlsEducation #HerRightToReturn #GirlsEducation #KadunaState #BBYDI

More than 700 women applied for just 15 spots in our first Digital Safety Advocates Fellowship. That level of interest says a lot about the demand for practical digital-safety knowledge and support around technology-facilitated gender-based violence. And that was only one part of September at BBYDI. We also hosted our first Adolescent Girls Hangout in Kwara, deepened our girls’ education work in Kaduna, continued mentoring SheBuilds AI fellows, and took part in regional conversations on democracy and youth participation. Our September edition of The BBYDI Brief shares what happened, what we learned, and what comes next. Read the newsletter here: linkedin.com/pulse/700-women…

Automated moderation reads Nigerian Pidgin as English. So a Pidgin post with a false claim about polling units goes through a filter that thinks it understood the thing, finds nothing wrong, and passes it on. Nobody checks it after that. Yoruba has a version of the same problem, because the diacritics carrying its tone usually get stripped before anything reads the text. Closing the Indigenous-Language Detection Gap, our new policy brief, goes to the people who can fix this: Meta, Google, TikTok and X, plus NCC, NITDA and NDPC. Four asks of the platforms. Surge review capacity in Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Pidgin and Kanuri through the election window, sized against real Nigerian user numbers rather than a global multilingual capability nobody has tested on Nigerian content. Content Credentials on political advertising, in whatever language it runs. A fast review route for accredited Nigerian fact-checkers, working from a standard evidence template. Weekly reporting on what is being enforced here. Two for the regulators. NCC and NITDA to issue an election-period code of practice using mandates they already hold. NDPC to check whether people posting in Nigerian languages get the same privacy notices, appeal routes and redress as people posting in English. None of this asks a platform to disclose anything proprietary. There is a business argument as well. DataReportal put Facebook at roughly 38 million Nigerian users in late 2025, with TikTok ad reach up 43.4% year on year. Nigerian users aged 16 and over are on an average of seven platforms a month, up from five in 2024. When something goes visibly wrong on one platform, people move. This brief was produced by Brain Builders Youth Development Initiative and FactCheck Africa, supported by the Digital Democracy Initiative and CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. #ContentModeration #InformationIntegrityr