In 2025, Burkina Faso's military government issued a decree requiring every NGO in the country to move its funds into a single state-controlled bank. With one administrative order, civil society lost financial privacy overnight. The government could now see every incoming donation, every outgoing payment, every operational transaction in real time. By early 2026, over 100 organisations had been dissolved. No trials. No charges. Just a financial map and a decree.

Burkina Faso is not an outlier. It is the clearest example of a pattern playing out across the continent. Uganda froze the accounts of five prominent civil society organisations weeks before 2026 presidential election. Ethiopia suspended human rights groups days after they signed a public letter criticising government policy. Nigeria's Central Bank ordered commercial banks to freeze the accounts of #EndSARS protest supporters with no court order. The Feminist Coalition switched to Bitcoin. Donations kept arriving.

That last detail is why we built HakiFedha.

What is HakiFedha?

HakiFedha (Haki = justice, Fedha = finance in Swahili) is a multilingual knowledge hub and peer mentorship network built to help activists, journalists, human rights defenders, whistleblowers, and NGOs across Africa use Bitcoin and privacy tools to protect their finances, communications, and operations.

The hub is for people operating under real pressure, such as field workers with intermittent connectivity, NGO treasurers who need to explain Bitcoin to their board, journalists protecting sources in countries with mandatory SIM card registration, whistleblowers who cannot afford a financial paper trail.

What is on the hub?

• Practical guides on Bitcoin, self-custody, Lightning, and privacy tools written specifically for African civil society contexts
• Tool reviews covering wallets (local language support and African currency information included), VPNs, encrypted messengers, and AI tools
• Free organisational toolkits: Bitcoin governance frameworks, treasury management templates, custody and key management policies, crisis preparedness plans, and accounting logs
• BitMentor, a peer-to-peer volunteer network connecting civil society organisations with experienced Bitcoiners for hands-on guidance on self-custody, multisig, BTCPay Server setup, Bitcoin payroll, and more
• The Africa Financial Tyranny Index (AFTI), an open dataset tracking how African governments use financial mechanisms, such as account freezes, mandatory state banking, foreign funding restrictions, to suppress civil society. Currently documenting 32 incidents across 17 countries.

Why Bitcoin specifically?

Because it is the only financial tool that shares the same threat model as the people we are trying to help. You cannot freeze a Bitcoin wallet the way you can freeze a bank account. You cannot block a Lightning payment the way you can block a wire transfer. You cannot map an organisation's donor network by subpoenaing a bank when that organisation is running multisig self-custody.

The Nigeria case in 2020 made this concrete. When the account freeze hit, Bitcoin kept working. HakiFedha exists so that civil society across the continent has that option available before the freeze arrives, not after.

Where it stands

HakiFedha is an early-stage initiative built entirely through voluntary effort. The hub is live at https://hakifedha.org/. The AFTI dataset and methodology are published[ on GitHub](http://github.com/HakiFedha/africa-financial-tyranny-index](http://github.com/HakiFedha/africa-financial-tyranny-index) under CC-BY 4.0.

Calling Bitcoin educators and practitioners

BitMentor, our peer-to-peer mentorship network, connects civil society organisations with experienced Bitcoiners who can provide hands-on guidance. If you have experience with self-custody, multisig, BTCPay Server, Lightning, or Bitcoin operational security and want to put that knowledge to work for human rights defenders and NGOs across Africa, we would love to have you involved. The ask is modest — a few hours when you can, matched to organisations whose needs fit your experience.

Reach out at https://hakifedha.org/become-a-bitmentor or reply here.

Happy to answer questions and hear from anyone working on similar problems or with contacts in African civil society who might benefit from the resources.