UNDP Nigeria Digital Solutions Call to End Digital Violence Against Women and Girls: Historical Reference

UNDP Nigeria Digital Solutions Call to End Digital Violence Against Women and Girls: Historical Reference

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Nigeria ran a national call for digital solutions that could help prevent, detect, respond to, or monitor digital violence against women and girls in Nigeria. The call was part of the 2025 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign, whose theme focused on ending digital violence against all women and girls.

This is now a historical reference, not an open application. The closed round had a deadline of Friday, 12 December 2025. The official application route remains the Google Form recorded in the metadata, but a current check resolves that URL to a Google account sign-in page rather than an open submission view. No later UNDP Nigeria cycle for this specific call has been announced in the official material checked for this update. Readers should not treat the old form as evidence that applications are open.

Opportunity at a glance

The important distinction is between a program benefit and a financial award. The call descriptions promise exposure, documentation, tailored support, and access to conversations with government, regulators, private-sector representatives, digital-rights organisations, and women’s groups. They do not state a grant amount, prize, stipend, equity investment, or reimbursement. A future edition could use different terms, so its own notice would control if UNDP Nigeria announces one.

What the call was looking for

UNDP Nigeria was seeking practical work already connected to the problem, rather than a general statement that online abuse is harmful. The call targeted solutions that could make online spaces safer for women and girls in Nigeria. A suitable submission might have been a reporting or referral tool, a service that helps people document abuse, a platform feature that improves response to harmful content, a safety or privacy product, a digital-literacy system, or another technology-led approach with a clear connection to gendered digital violence.

The published descriptions repeatedly emphasised working, tested, or real-life solutions. That wording matters. An idea with no prototype, pilot, testing, users, or credible operating evidence would have been a weaker fit than a modest tool that people were already using and learning from. The call was not limited to one software category, but the technology component needed to be meaningful. A purely offline service with no digital role would not clearly meet the stated focus.

The problem could be framed through four risk categories:

• Content risks: harmful, abusive, sexualised, misleading, or non-consensual material directed at women and girls, including image-based abuse or manipulated media.
• Contact risks: unwanted or threatening messages, grooming, coercion, stalking, harassment, or other harmful interactions initiated through digital channels.
• Conduct risks: bullying, doxxing, impersonation, coordinated pile-ons, threats, extortion, and other abusive behaviour carried out by users.
• Contract risks: harmful or unfair uses of data, deceptive digital terms, unsafe consent practices, or other risks created by the relationship between a person and a digital service.

A strong application would have identified the categories that its solution actually addressed and explained the mechanism. For example, a reporting service could explain how it receives a complaint, protects the person making it, routes the report, and measures response time. A moderation tool could state what it detects, who reviews alerts, what happens when a report is wrong, and how the system avoids increasing risk for the person targeted. The category labels were useful only when tied to a concrete product or operating model.

Who could apply

The call was aimed at young Nigerian startup founders, social innovators, innovation hubs, labs, developers, creators, and similar teams building relevant digital or tech-enabled solutions. Women-led and youth-led teams were encouraged to apply. The geographic focus was Nigeria, and the call sought solutions with a direct or credible connection to the experiences of women and girls in the country.

The public descriptions do not establish a single legal-registration rule, age cutoff, required funding stage, or universal organisational form. They describe a broad innovation audience, but that should not be expanded into a claim that every individual, overseas organisation, or untested concept was automatically eligible. A prospective applicant would have needed to use the form’s own questions and any current instructions to resolve edge cases.

The clearest fit would have been a Nigerian team able to show all or most of the following:

• a working or tested digital product, service, platform, or process;
• a specific form of digital violence or online safety risk being addressed;
• evidence that the problem occurs for women or girls in the intended setting;
• a team capable of operating the solution responsibly;
• an explanation of how the product protects privacy, dignity, and personal safety; and
• a realistic account of current reach, results, limitations, and next steps.

Teams should not have claimed that UNDP would fund product development, provide a cash prize, guarantee adoption, or offer a contract. Those outcomes are not stated in the published call descriptions.

What selected participants could receive

The published call descriptions present the opportunity as a support and visibility pathway. Selected solutions could be showcased through UNDP Nigeria and partner channels during the 16 Days of Activism campaign. The descriptions also refer to tailored technical and strategic support intended to help promising work become stronger or more scalable.

Six top solutions were identified for higher-profile recognition. The published descriptions say that these solutions would be featured in an Innovation Spotlight at the UNDP Innovation Center in Lagos, where their work could be documented and presented as an example of innovation addressing digital violence. They also describe an invitation to present at a multi-stakeholder dialogue involving public agencies, regulators, private-sector actors, digital-rights organisations, and women’s groups.

These benefits have real value for a team that needs informed feedback, partners, public credibility, or a route into policy conversations. They should still be described accurately. Visibility is not the same as funding, a procurement award, investment, or a promise of implementation. The public call did not state a cash amount or a guaranteed commercial agreement.

How the archived application worked

The following steps describe the submission logic for the closed round without inventing a document checklist that is not visible in the verified material:

1. Confirm the fit. Check that the team and solution are connected to Nigeria and that the work addresses digital violence or a closely related online safety problem affecting women and girls.
2. Describe the working solution. Explain what exists today, who uses it, how it works, and what has been tested. Distinguish a live product or pilot from a concept that still needs to be built.
3. Name the risk category. State whether the main response concerns content, contact, conduct, contract, or more than one category. Describe the harm and the point at which the solution intervenes.
4. Provide evidence. Use honest indicators such as users, reports handled, response times, pilot results, retention, partner feedback, or documented learning. Small but verifiable evidence is more useful than an inflated reach claim.
5. Explain safeguards. If the product handles reports, identity information, images, messages, or other sensitive data, explain access controls, data minimisation, referral arrangements, moderation safeguards, and survivor-centred practices as relevant to the solution.
6. Complete the official form carefully. Use the archived form only as a record of the original route. The published notices specifically warned applicants to provide accurate names and email addresses. Any future form would be the authority for its own fields and document requirements.
7. Submit before the closed deadline. The 2025 round closed on 12 December 2025. Late submission is not a current option, and the old form should not be used to infer that a new window has opened.

The form may have requested information beyond the summary available in public notices. It is therefore safer to say that applicants should have prepared organisational, team, solution, impact, and contact information than to assert that a particular registration certificate, pitch deck, budget, or recommendation letter was mandatory. Those details must come from a future official form if another cycle is announced.

What to prepare if UNDP announces another round

A future call could change its timing, eligibility, benefits, or required materials. A team preparing for a possible successor should maintain a concise description of the problem, a product demonstration or link, a record of testing, and a clear explanation of how the work reduces harm. It should be ready to separate prevention from response: educating users, detecting abuse, helping someone report it, preserving evidence, connecting a survivor to support, and improving institutional accountability are different functions.

The Nigerian context should be specific rather than decorative. Explain the channels where the harm appears, the language or connectivity constraints users face, the organisations that can provide support, and the legal or institutional limits that affect reporting. Do not include identifiable survivor details without consent. Do not publish sensitive evidence merely to make an application look stronger.

The team should also state what the solution cannot do. A reporting tool cannot guarantee removal by a platform. A detection model can produce false positives. A database can create additional privacy risk. A referral service may depend on partners whose capacity varies. Showing that the team understands these limits would make the application more credible and would help UNDP assess whether support could be used responsibly.

Current status and archive note

The 2025 call has ended. The official route currently resolves to a Google account sign-in page, and no next cycle for this specific UNDP Nigeria call was found in the official material checked for this update. That is why the metadata retains the real 2025 deadline and sets historicalReference = true. The page is intended to preserve the opportunity’s scope and terms for research, not to send readers to a live application that has not been announced.

If UNDP Nigeria publishes a new edition, its official notice should replace the archived status only after the new deadline, eligibility, benefits, application form, and URL have been checked. Until then, treat this entry as a record of the 2025 call to help end digital violence against women and girls in Nigeria.