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Educate. Build. Localise.

Building Human Rights Infrastructure With Bitcoin, Privacy & AI

RightsDevs empowers African developers to build and localise open-source tools at the intersection of Bitcoin, privacy and AI, engineered through a human rights lens and frameworks.

The Case

Why This Matters In Africa

Financial Exclusion

Bitcoin and open protocols offer permissionless and freedom money that cannot simply be switched off or frozen.

Surveillance by Design

Financial and identity infrastructure are increasingly turned into tools of tracking by Big Tech and the state. Privacy and secure communication must be engineered in from the start, not bolted on afterwards.

Imported Tools, Local Risk

Much of the software meant to protect human rights and digital liberties is built elsewhere, for other threat models, in other languages, and rarely audited by the people who depend on it day to day.

AI for Privacy & Digital Rights

While commercial AI providers offer powerful services, they capture user data—analysing and training models on private documents. RightsDevs focuses on open-source, privacy-preserving AI that protects data sovereignty.

RightsDevs exists to grow that generation of developers: local, accountable, and fluent in both engineering and human rights.

The Rationale

Why Combine These Pillars?

Bitcoin + Human Rights

Financial Sovereignty

Provides permissionless, censorship-resistant financial rails so civil society organisations, activists, and journalists can receive funding and operate safely even under state banking blockades or systemic financial restrictions.

Privacy Protocols

Communication Privacy & Digital Rights

Financial freedom requires non-custodial privacy and open communication. Pairing cryptographic privacy protocols with open communication standards (such as Nostr) defends digital rights, prevents de-platforming, and safeguards metadata.

AI + Privacy

Open-Source Data Sovereignty

Deploys local, open-source AI models that run privately on-device or on trusted infrastructure. This guarantees activists and researchers benefit from automated analysis without exposing sensitive data or revealing confidential sources to commercial AI providers.

Human Rights + Civic Tech

Algorithmic Defence & Localisation

Embeds international human rights frameworks directly into open-source software architecture, ensuring tools are localisations, audited, and engineered specifically to resist censorship and defend civil liberties in vulnerable regions.

Programme

Programme Pillars

Train

Developer Bootcamps & Webinars

Hands-on, intensive training in Bitcoin protocol mechanics, privacy-preserving techniques, open relay protocols (like Nostr), and localised open-source AI, designed for developers building for real civic communities.

Embed

Human Rights Frameworks

Global human rights standards and civil liberties principles built directly into software architecture and data protection design, ensuring communication privacy and user consent from the ground up.

Build

Open-Source Public Goods

Direct technical support and mentorship to design, deploy, and maintain localised, censorship-resistant software tools and infrastructure that defend human rights on the ground.

Connect

Civic Ecosystem Support

A working bridge between software engineers, human rights defenders and civil society organisations, so the tools that get built solve problems people actually have.

Bridging Tech & Human Rights

By connecting open-source developers, particularly BitDevs, directly with human rights advocates and civil society organisations, RightsDevs makes sure the tools that get engineered actually protect financial sovereignty, communication privacy, secure storage, and resist censorship on the ground.

Get Involved

Get Involved With RightsDevs

Whether you are an open-source developer, a human rights organisation, or a mentor interested in our programmes, we would love to collaborate.

Developers Human Rights Organisations Mentors
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