"People are really panicking" : Anti-LGBTQ Legislation Casts a Shadow Across Africa

Thus far, 2026 has been a very difficult year for LGBTQ rights in Africa. Homosexuality is illegal in 31 countries on the African continent, representing half of the continent’s states, and in recent years, the adoption of anti-LGBTQ laws has increased dramatically. Last month, Ghana’s parliament passed what it called the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill which reinforces an existing penalty of up to three ‌years ⁠in prison for same-sex sexual acts while also sanctioning the “funding, sponsorship or promotion” of LGBTQ acts with prison terms ranging from three to five years, and introducing a “duty to report” LGBTQ acts to a police officer or other authorities. In March, Senegal’s legislature passed a law personally introduced by the country’s then-Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, who is now speaker of the national assembly, that doubled to 10 years the maximum prison term for consensual sex acts by same-sex couples and criminalized the so-called “promotion” of homosexuality with jail terms of three to seven years. Diaraye Bâ, a member of parliament for the Patriotes africains du Sénégal pour le travail, l’éthique et la fraternité (PASTEF), Senegal’s ruling party, crowed that “homosexuals will no longer breathe in this country,” Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Senegal’s polygamous president, signed the bill into law in April. Earlier this month, in Niger, the military junta there promulgated a new penal code that severely criminalizes homosexuality, with sanctions ranging from five to ten years for engaging in sexual intercourse with a member of the same sex to ten to twenty years of imprisonment for anyone who “manages, directs, operates, finances, or participates in clubs, companies, organizations, or associations for homosexuals or LGBTQ.” Last September, the rubber stamp transitional assembly of Burkina Faso’s ruling military dictatorship passed a law criminalizing consensual same-sex relations with two to five years in prison, as well as fines. These measures follow the so-called Anti-Homosexuality Act which was enacted by the Ugandan government in May 2023 and which mandates life imprisonment for sex between two people of the same gender, up to 20 years in prison for what it calls is the promotion of homosexuality and the death penalty for what it calls “aggravated homosexuality.” Some of these laws have at least in part been the product of the advocacy far-right evangelical organizations working in the United states. In Senegal, MassResistance, a Massachusetts-based organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, discussed campaign strategy and mobilization tactics with a Senegalese network of Islamic and civil society organizations opposed to LGBTQ rights. In Uganda, Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries, also based in Massachusetts, has also been active since the early 2000s, where he claimed that Western agitators were trying to destroy Uganda’s social fabric by spreading what he called “the disease” of homosexuality to children there. To discuss this situation, we are joined on Notes From the World today by three guests: Alice Bordaçarre, the head of the women’s rights and gender equality desk with the Fédération internationale pour les droits humains (FIDH); Leila Lariba, the director of One Love Sisters Ghana; and Frank Mugisha, the Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda.