Key Figures
Nothing2Hide in 2025:
- 834 people trained
- 6 organizations supported through security audits
- 34 journalists, advocates, or activists who received personalized support (analysis of online traces, smartphones, computers, installation of specialized software, etc.)
Behind these figures lie very concrete realities: human rights activists in Algeria who were able to protect their data during arbitrary checks; an organization in Afghanistan that overhauled its entire data management policy following our audit; a Belarusian journalist whose phone analysis revealed the presence of spyware; and a French journalist who was the victim of digital surveillance, which we were able to put an end to.
834 people trained in 2025—that’s equivalent to the number of people trained by our organization last year, and it’s beyond our wildest hopes given how badly 2025 started.
2025, Annus horribilis
In the United States, upon taking office, the Trump administration waged an all-out war against humanitarian aid by cutting 92% of USAID funding, the U.S. development agency, thereby depriving many NGOs of the funding needed to carry out their projects. Nothing2Hide and its projects were impacted just like thousands of other organizations, and this 2025 activity report might not have existed.
The start of the year was thus marked by the sudden halt of part of our international funding with the temporary loss of one of our main donors, the Open Technology Fund (OTF), a loss that severely weakened the association’s financial situation and long-term viability. We therefore had to reinvent ourselves. Thanks to the diversification of our activities, which began in 2018—and was urgently accelerated in 2025—we managed to maintain our overall level of activity. By the end of the year, our funding now comes from a more balanced mix: French foundations (Fondation de France, DRAC, Fondation Afnic), international partners outside of USAID, and, to a lesser extent, individual donations. This diversification is not a given: it remains fragile and is our main focus for 2026.
Media and Information Literacy (MIL), now a major activity
During Trump’s first term, the Open Technology Fund (OTF), our main donor, saw its funding significantly cut by the Trump administration, which brought Nothing2Hide’s international projects to a sudden halt. At that time, we launched a new initiative in France: Media and Information Literacy (MIL). Still in their infancy in 2018, our MIL projects, grouped under the banner All Actors and Actresses of Information, accounted for more than half of our training activities in 2025.
In 2025, the majority of our EMI activities took place in France, at high schools, universities, community centers, educational centers, and associations.
These projects were funded by French agencies and organizations: DRAC Île-de-France, DRAC Centre-Val de Loire, Cité Educative, Fondation 7 ans, and Fondation Afnic. By diversifying our activities through EMI, we have managed to mitigate the impact of cuts in international funding on our operations while continuing to fulfill the association’s mission under new arrangements.
Internationally: Digital Security as the Primary Area of Focus
While the number of media and information literacy training sessions in France has increased significantly compared to previous years, internationally, digital security remains Nothing2Hide’s primary area of focus.
Our international interventions in 2025 covered five priority regions: the Maghreb (Algeria), West Africa (Senegal), Central Africa (Uganda, DRC), Southern Africa, and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Afghanistan). These regions were not chosen at random: they combine significant pressure on digital freedoms, the presence of trusted local partners, and documented needs for security training. Added to these criteria is a geopolitical reality: in several of these countries, our partners work under high-risk conditions and have limited access to other resources comparable to what we offer.
Thus, in 2025, we collaborated with:
- Polaris in Senegal to organize a training program for 50 trainers in three major cities across the country,
- the Foundation for the Promotion of Rights in Algeria,
- Begum in Afghanistan, an NGO that distributes educational content aimed at young Afghan women
- La Cloche and Streaming Asylum in Uganda and the DRC to lead digital security training sessions for journalists in exile.
- RSF, Singa, and CFI, as part of Voix en exil, a project offering financial, legal, and technical support to journalists in exile who wish to continue their work in France
- Finally, while Nothing2Hide most often works with journalists, our organization’s mandate, “Protecting Information,” is understood in the broadest sense, and we were thus approached by the NGO Aidsfonds to create a digital security training program for sex workers in South Africa, whose challenges relate to harassment, anonymity, and pseudonymity.
This testimonial, received after our training in Algeria, sums up better than anything else what we do:
I wanted to pass on a message from three participants in the training. They come from a partner organization specializing in enforced disappearances. Their leader, a Franco-Algerian woman, was unfortunately turned away yesterday upon her arrival at the Algiers airport. Thanks to what they learned during the training—particularly regarding device security—they were able to effectively protect their data. They wanted to thank you warmly. They feel safer today, and that is largely thanks to you. A big thank you again for the quality of your work.
Foundation for the Promotion of Rights in Algeria
In France, growing needs for digital security
When Nothing2Hide was founded, the idea of training French organizations to protect their data against domestic political risks would have seemed unlikely. It no longer is.
Since 2024 and the fiasco of the early legislative elections, which saw a surge in the number of far-right deputies in the National Assembly, we have been receiving an increasing number of requests from associations and media outlets in France. Without adopting controversial labels ourselves, we simply note what our contacts tell us: civil society organizations in France are afraid; they want to protect their members, their sources, and their communications. This need is real, it is growing, and it falls squarely within our mandate. Supporting these actors in France is not a betrayal of our international mission—it is the same mission, carried out where it is needed.
To address these needs, we reached out to the Fondation de France and the Un Monde Par Tous foundation to launch the Tech4Society project.
Tech4Society represents a structural evolution of our mandate. For nearly ten years, we have worked almost exclusively in countries under authoritarian regimes. The rise of the radical right in Europe, and in France in particular, has changed the landscape. French associations, unions, and independent media outlets are reaching out to us with the same needs as our partners in authoritarian countries: to protect their communications, secure their data, and train their teams. In 2025, we secured funding for three years of activity for the Tech4Society project.
Events 2025
Our international presence in 2025 was not just a matter of visibility: it is where the partnerships that make our work possible are built. In Lusaka, we met with organizations from Chad, Mali, Cameroon, and Nigeria with whom we had never worked before. In Dakar, our participation in the Africa Facts summit strengthened our ties with African fact-checking networks, a natural area of convergence with our EMI focus. Finally, in Astana, leading the opening keynote at the European forum on disinformation in the age of AI allowed us to clearly establish our position on a topic that will shape our work in the coming years.
Our 2025 Retrospective:
- In February, we participated in a roundtable discussion titled Digital Resistance in Francophone Contexts during the global digital freedoms event RightsCon2025
- In April 2025, we launched our first festival: the Nothing2Hide Decentralized Festival (N2HDF). This is an event we plan to repeat every year and establish as a long-term tradition.
- In July 2025, we participated in the Digital Defenders Partnership (DDP) network meeting in Lusaka, Zambia. This was an opportunity for us to meet new organizations from Senegal, Chad, Mali, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. And since we were already traveling 6,000 km, we decided to make the most of it and, while we were at it, we participated in the Forum on Digital Rights and Inclusion in Africa, the DRIF, which was held in Lusaka. We led a workshop there alongside Souleymane Kabolé.
- On April 28 and 29, we were at the Journalism Conference in Marseille to lead a workshop on digital security for journalists from the Mediterranean region
- In November, in Kampala, Uganda, we organized an event on digital security for journalists and civil society in partnership with the Media Challenge Initiative and Streaming Asylum: Digital Shadows, take back control!
- In early October, we traveled to Dakar with our partner Factoscope to participate in the Africa Facts summit, which brought together fact-checking organizations from across the African continent.
- And to round out the year, we spent many hours on a plane to reach Astana, Kazakhstan, to deliver the opening keynote at the forum organized by Europe on information manipulation in the age of AI. Disinformation in the age of AI is part of our daily lives—and that of the journalists and activists we support. In 2025, we began incorporating this dimension into our training programs—how to detect content generated or manipulated by AI tools, and how to distinguish between information and misinformation in a feed saturated with AI-generated content. Our keynote presentation in Astana on this topic confirmed that Nothing2Hide has a legitimate and recognized voice on these issues.
Over 4,700 people trained in 10 years, interventions wherever freedom of information is threatened, and in 2025, a major crisis weathered without wavering. Nothing2Hide is moving forward. Support us!
A word about the association
Nothing2Hide is an association specializing in digital technology and information. We use technology to protect and disseminate information. Since its creation, our association has trained more than 4,700 citizens, journalists, and activists.
The association’s mission is to foster, develop, and promote: a solid understanding and mastery of digital technology, access to online information and the fight against all forms of censorship, training in data, source, and communication security, and digital literacy.
This report will be submitted to the association’s members for approval at the 2025 General Assembly.