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“All Hail The Queers”: An African photography magazine responds to queer pain - Minority Africa
Nobuhle Nyoni
June 30, 2023
In 2021, following the closure of a community center for LGBTQ+ people in Ghana weeks after it had opened, the country’s parliament proposed a bill dubbed “The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanian Family Values Bill.”
If passed, it would make identifying as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community a criminal offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The bill further proposed even harsher punishments for people who support or “advocate” gay rights.
It sparked global outrage due to its unjust punishment of queer identity. While some activists rallied to the streets, others chose art to express their anger and pain.
Among these was Zawadi The Art, a visual artist and the mastermind behind All Hail The Queers – a photography magazine that explores queer pain in Africa.
“The LGBTQIA+ bill passed in Ghana was why I decided to put this magazine together,” says Zawadi. “I remember being so upset. I could not believe that the government had made a conscious decision to criminalize being gay and to subject their citizens to conversion therapy.
“When I decided to put this magazine together I started talking to the people closest to me, people who understood my pain. They saw the vision and decided they would not let the opportunity pass them by. That’s how the contributors came to be. I can say we did this without experience but the response was great.”
The ideal future of Africa is one of freedom and diversity. A future where queer people have human rights and do not suppress every aspect of themselves to navigate society. Unfortunately, the current reality doesn’t make this future seem obtainable.
Mal Muga, a portrait photographer, contributed stirring visuals to remind the world that queerness is not taboo. The black background represented the dirtiness and darkness associated with being queer which he smudged with color as if to say, “We are here, we are important and you will not erase our stories.”
Tinashe Wakapila, a poet and founder of Wakapila Arts Foundation, used words to bring healing and speak on the truths around being queer. In their work, they define beauty as the courage to be your true self despite the unspeakable violence around you.
There is still much re-learning that needs to be done within the continent regarding LGBTQIA+ experiences. The keenest loss felt by the African queer collective is the erasure of their history and existence. However, the few artifacts this magazine has managed to piece together show that being queer was never taboo for African people.
“We existed! We were priests and caretakers and were an integral part of society,” says Mal Muga. “Our roles in society were equally important. Yet society today leans on the law of religion to the point that one can look at a queer person and dislike them, kill them and defend themselves against such a hateful crime.”
Today, homophobic violence is on the rise in Ghana, which includes harassment, detention and “corrective rape” of women who are presumed to be lesbians.
Some activists like Mal Muga believe these are largely fueled by some religious doctrines, like in the case of Christianity.
“There is one law they seem to forget: ‘love your neighbor as you love yourself,’” says Mal Muga. “If we truly adhered to this common rule in every religion across the globe, would we be killing one another?”
The criminalization of homosexuality in Ghana started with the Offences Against the Person Act in 1861. The Act was implemented in all British colonies. The colonial empires imposed arbitrary standards of gender and sexuality, which were enforced by religious morality. The Bible acted as an enforcer for an un-African way of life.
In 1957, when Ghana gained independence from British rule, Section 104 of the Ghanaian Criminal Code, 1960 criminalized “unnatural carnal knowledge,” which is sexual intercourse with a person in an unnatural manner or with an animal.
“I feel dirty because I don’t feel like I’m living my ancestors’ wildest dream. Parts of me are unnatural, even when they feel like home to me. The West dictates our lives,” explains Mal Muga.
Often, some people defend homophobia using African culture. For example, in Zimbabwe, the elderly will say, “Hazvina hunhu,” which loosely translates to “It is immoral.” This statement alone can shut down any interrogation of harmful views blanketed by it. However, this artful dodge still needs to be scrutinized. There is a need to ask what we will become if people continue to turn a blind eye to the queerness of African culture.
“In my Shona culture, our pronouns have always been they/them, which we use as a sign of respect for the person,” explains Tinashe. “We can safely say the English ‘terminology’ was trying so hard to individualize and gender-characterize everything and put it in a box. The introduction of the term they/them is edifying the spectrum and releasing people from being defined by their body features or clothes.
“In other parts of Africa, when a person is said to have a spirit, be it male or female, the spirit will demand a life partner and can sometimes choose a partner of the same sex. They will call it a tradition because it involves spirits, but if a male spirit can choose a male life partner, I believe that ties to queerness. Queerness does appease our ancestors.”
Arguments around religion and culture often entrench taboos around queerness.
“We have been taught to feel dirty,” explains Mal Muga. “I wrote ‘SiTaboo’ to express what life has been for many of us. History says we have always been accommodated as queers, yet as time passed, the language changed. Religion dis-established our culture.”
All Hail The Queers highlights that everyday life is not filled with bliss for queer people in Africa. The magazine is a reminder of the pain that queer people experience – one that urges society to change. However, amidst the pain is a celebration of queer identity. Zawadi The Art wrote “When You Handed Us the Mirror” as an exploration of their roots in which they pay homage to the long line of spiritual beings from which they’re descended.
“Before exploring my roots, it felt like I was following a blurred vision of myself,” Zawadi says. “I decided right then that I owed it to myself to live my life to its fullness. There was no point in living if I was not going to be myself. I had the chance to be art and to live art. I didn’t get to do that before because I had to change this image of success based on a white man’s point of view.”
“So I decided to go back to my roots. I needed to feel my roots and my skin and speak my language. I needed to feel the sun, be amongst the trees and communicate with who I am. That was the essence of awakening, a great rising.”
According to Zawadi, there is a thread of authenticity that traces its way through the magazine. Each contribution is a triumphant rallying cry for authentic queer existence. It is an embodiment of queer culture – a record of queer history, which critiques the legacy of colonialism by unashamedly displaying queer lives.
“We currently have over 1500 reads. I guess it speaks to the power of authenticity and rawness,” she adds.
Today, the magazine is available on Yumpu and Issuu. There is a promise to see more issues like All Hail The Queers from Zawadi. She says each issue will take on different approaches depending on the annual themes. The subsequent magazine issues will be released under The Queer Republic, a transnational network of LGBTQIA+ Africans.
“The truth has just put on a drag show, and it’s not your average one-day show,” Zawadi says. “It’s not a show for your entertainment; this is our lives layered in color, this is queerness living in all its glory, these are living and breathing.”
Edited/Reviewed by: Cassandra Roxburgh, PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Nobuhle N Nyoni is a freelance writer, self-published author and personal blogger who has been running her blog becomingubu.com for 6 years and counting. She is also a website designer and social media consultant.

author: Nobuhle Nyoni


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All lives matter in Nigeria, except Queer lives - Minority Africa
Victor Emmanuel
October 27, 2020
Over the last two weeks, Nigerians gathered en masse nationwide to protest against a rogue policing unit, the now-defunct  Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), which has a history of extra-judicial killings, kidnappings, and robberies.
As these protests progressed, I decided to join in. While part of the #ENDSARS protest in Enugu, Nigeria, my friend and I were told to not hoist our Queer Lives Matter placards so as not to cause a distraction.
To provoke a reaction, a boy started mimicking the gestures of another effeminate friend of mine who was also protesting. When we ignored him, he grabbed my friend and it almost led to a physical altercation.
I am a gay man who has faced oppression and homophobia from the first day I accepted myself and decided to live my truth. My very religious family made me question my sanity and feel like a sore toe.
As opposed to feeling safe around them, I felt the most anxious and undeserving and I had one self-harm episode. I decided to break the vicious cycle recently and came out to them. It wasn’t pleasant and in the end, I had to leave home and start my life afresh someplace else.
My fight against institutionalized homophobia stems from my victory over my family.
There is an unwritten agreement that the #ENDSARS movement and protests are personal to all; we seem to agree that each person’s experience with SARS is different from the other and just as valid.
Unfortunately, in this personalization, the LGBTQIAP+ community, it appears, has been exempted. What we, as persons in the community, have seen through the protests is Nigerians screaming for justice and simultaneously silencing others asking for the same.
Before the current spiral of events with the #EndSARS movement, Matthew Blaise, a queer rights activist, was arrested by the police on suspicion of looking ‘gay’. He was taken to their station where they intimidated him and threatened to physically assault him. Matthew was released hours later, after being extorted and harassed.
They assumed he was gay from his looks and mannerisms. He was threatened with the 14 years imprisonment that the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition ACT (SSMPA) of Nigeria carries.  There was no proof that he was queer, just a presumption. Like everybody else who has been brutalized by the deadly unit, Matthew was summarily convicted of a crime and had to pay his way out.
Matthew’s case is not an isolated incident. In 2018, 57 men were arrested at a birthday party in Egbeda, Lagos State. They were accused of being in a queer gathering.
In Nigeria, the suspicion of being queer is almost as deadly as having committed a felony.
Several SARS victims have complained about being wrongly profiled as criminals because of their hairstyles, gadgets, and driving flashy cars among other reasons.
In the same vein, LGBTQIAP+ Nigerians are sharing their experience with this exact unit, how they have been arrested for their looks and mannerisms, for having queer content on their phones, and yet our truth is met with hostility.
We are told by the Nigerians who we link hands with and fight with side by side that this is not our fight and that this is not the right time to demand that our voices be heard.
To quote James Baldwin, “You always told me it takes time. It’s taken my father’s time, my mother’s time. My uncle’s time. My brothers’ and my sisters’ time. My nieces and my nephews’ time. How much time do you want for your ‘progress’?”
The idea that queer people always have to postpone their liberation is problematic for several reasons. It implies that any form of oppression is okay and that injustice is tolerable. It also is ambiguous: there is no better day to fight for queer liberation than today and right now.
As much as being told to “wait for my time,” hurts, I know from history that it is not the first time a community has been told to wait for their time so as not to “distract” the movement.
Bayard Rustin, who was very instrumental to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, was asked to “take a step back” because the movement was not comfortable with his being an openly gay man and because they felt it was not his time.
They wanted Rustin’s support in the fight for Black liberation but also wanted to distance themselves from queerness as much as possible.
At the Abuja #ENDSARS protests, queer protesters were mobbed for carrying placards indicating that their lives matter too. If the heterosexual man and woman’s life matters, why should queer people suspend the fight for their own life?  It is appalling to see how during a struggle against oppression, Nigerians still find the time and energy to oppress others.
When I returned home after the protest, I went to the Facebook page of one of the photographers that were present.  I saw pictures of myself holding #EndSARS placards but none of those moments wherein I held #Queerlivesmatter placards were captured. The silencing was loud and deliberate.
There is no true progress until we understand that justice is all-encompassing. Queer lives, like the lives of others, have been lost to police brutality. In light of that fact, queer people should have a voice in fighting an institution that punishes them extrajudicially.
Despite the silencing, mobbing, and bullying, queer Nigerians have continued to make statements across the country to remind the world that we are here. Through contributions by queer folks and allies within and outside the country, queer activists and leaders have provided feeding, transportation, housing, and security for protesters.
There is an overwhelming sense that even if Nigerians do not show up for us, we will always show up for ourselves. Perhaps, that is enough.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Victor Emmanuel (Vicwonder) is a final year student of UNN, LGBTQ+ rights activists, writer, model, and YouTuber. He dedicates his time towards the fight for queer liberation in Nigeria. His work has appeared in Kalahari Review, among others and he was nominated for the South East Campus Awards (Writing Category).

source: news-minorityafrica

created: October 27, 2020

license: Creative Commons - Attribution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

author: Victor Emmanuel


text: Pending - Minority Africa


text: Rejected - Minority Africa


text: Shortlisted - Minority Africa


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An assistive speech software hopes to help thousands of Nigerians with visual impairment - Minority Africa
Vindication Alawode
February 8, 2023
Driving a technological innovation was never going to be a task of one person, neither is it a race with one track. It is building an ecosystem where creative minds support one another in making a difference.
For millions of Nigerians who struggle with visual impairment and little to no vision, Visis—a text-to-speech software application—has been designed to enable them to independently and conveniently carry out their activities.
Irrespective of the etiology and forms of visual challenges experienced by people, the Visis App designed by Vinsighte responds to problems of visual loss. Most often, eye conditions are evaluated by primary physicians to know if such conditions are repairable by surgery or management. However, the tech solution is used by all categories of visually-impaired persons. It also helps users read printed materials including the ones that are not available in braille among other various functions.
“Vinsighte came about when me and my co-founders observed the rate of school dropout affecting visually impaired persons in our institution (University of Ibadan),” says Dr. Olarinde Olokuntoye, the organization’s Chief Operating Officer. “It became so close when it happened to a friend of ours and as medical students in school, we came together to brainstorm on the idea that could help visually impaired persons to read books and become educationally inclusive just like their sighted peers.”
This ‘friend’ who in 2018 had almost lost his eyesight after a terrible accident while playing football became one of the co-founders. Vinsighte was created by Oluwatomisin (Tomi) Kolawole (now a biomedical engineer and doctor) when he was an undergraduate medical student at the University of Ibadan in 2018. He and his friends birthed the idea of giving vision and creating insight, which led to the creation of the digital health venture. Their dream has been to help thousands of blind people achieve their dreams by helping them to read and navigate their environment.
When Mustapha Yusuf, 28, joined Bethesda Home for the Blind – a non-governmental organization providing support and rehabilitation for blind persons – he never imagined what life would turn out to be in the coming years; he never thought he could graduate from university. At a young age, Mustapha was raised in Bethesda where he was sponsored by the NGO through his primary education until the completion of his undergraduate studies at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).
“It is very heartbreaking when all [blind persons] keep hearing is that ‘there is ability in disability’ and at the end of the day, there is no action by the government to prove this. Action speaks louder than words,” he says.
The ‘heartbreak’ to which he refers is the quality of education that remains uncertain for students with visual impairment because of little or no accessible learning materials. This issue is often exacerbated by the expensive cost of specialized materials and the lack of support from the government.
“For example, if a sighted person is buying books and biro, the equivalent of that for a blind person needs to be a laptop. A blind person struggles to read twice as hard as a sighted person, so if the government is providing laptops for visually-impaired students, it’s not too much for any government,” Yusuf says. “When a laptop is being provided, as well as screen softwares and maybe a subsidized tuition fee, we feel less marginalized. Blind persons also need additional supplies especially extra allowances for those who assist them around. And for graduates like me, we need jobs.”
“I’m one of those in Bethesda who [uses] the Visis App. It is a speech software that helps us navigate our way [through] what is written on the screen,” Yusuf says. “The software application is just like an offshoot of what has been provided before, something like JAWS (Job Access With Speech). It enables you [to] read whatever is on the screen. For example, maybe on your laptop, all you need to do as a blind person is know your keystrokes and then once you are able to do that, the App reads out what is on the screen.”
According to Dr. Olokuntoye, the Visis App is unique compared to braille and other assistive tech solutions, as it reduces visually impaired persons’ dependence on human aid, thereby increasing their confidence while reading. “The app is easy to use as it guides the user in accessing all the features available and is quite compatible with affordable devices. It helps them to read [and] detect objects, colors and scenes around the user,” Dr. Olokuntoye says. “For the reading feature, It works by taking a picture of a book in front of the user. [It] scans the texts in the book [or] printed material and reads it aloud for them to listen to. For the detection, it works by taking a picture of the object, color or scene around the user, processes it in milliseconds and gives an audio output to the user. Our solution does not work with the internet to perform its functions.”
Visis has now been distributed across seven visually impaired schools in Nigeria with an estimated number of 5,000 users. But the app has its limitations. In the past two years of using the Visis App, Yusuf views his user experience as considerably okay. However, some features like pictures and image detection do not function properly. “The experience has been okay thus far. At least, we are able to use it and it works well with various devices,” he says. “It’s a little bit very hard. To a certain extent, images, scenes and objects are not always detected. Meanwhile, the text-to-speech feature is satisfactory.”
There are more than a million people with visual impairment and about three million persons with little-to-no vision in Nigeria, leaving more millions at risk of visual loss. While speaking with Minority Africa, Dr. Diane Hilal-Campo, a board-certified ophthalmologist in the United States, says that solutions are tailored to each patient, but what allows eye experts to do so is having access to a wide range of tools, equipment, devices and advancements in ophthalmic care, all of which are expensive.
“Technology is key to accurately assess eye conditions and provide an optimal outcome. Without it, patients may not get any care, let alone the customized care for an ideal result,” says Dr. Hilal-Campo. “However, those who live in low and middle-income countries do not have access to quality ophthalmic care or in many cases, any ophthalmic care. Until health policies are taken seriously worldwide and quality health care is not restricted to select nations, eye health will unfortunately take a back seat.”
Meanwhile, optometric practice in Nigeria as compared to other parts of the world is backward. After over 40 years of its existence in the country, experts in the field of optometry experience harsh work conditions and lapses that do not complement Nigeria’s goal towards the attainment of Universal Eye Health, which is an integral component of the Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Thereby, creating a marginalization of visually impaired persons.
Although recent data published by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows a significant change in Nigeria’s UHC between 2000 and 2019; 20.00 for the former and 44.00 for the latter, measured on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best), the federal government has not done enough to ensure the proper implementation of its healthcare policies. In areas where people have limited access to regular checkups, treatment and care, eye conditions — such as near- or far-sightedness, glaucoma and cataracts — may be left to worsen, making life needlessly difficult for them. Sadly, this is true of some rural communities in Nigeria as described by Dr. Miracle Dumbiri, a consulting Optometrist with Crystalview Eyecare, Ibadan.
“Whenever we have an opportunity to screen villagers, especially in rural areas, we see a lot of them with issues that are beyond repair. Usually, many of them fall victim to quacks who pose as doctors. However, if each community center has access to an Optometrist, it would be very impossible for quacks to penetrate those areas,” says Dr. Dumbiri
“My lecturer once said that ‘if optometry at 40 was backward, then what people say about a fool at 40 being a fool forever is actually true.’” he says. “Because the truth is that the government actually is not encouraging optometric practice in Nigeria. Optometrists are primary eyecare specialists, which means that all primary health centers in the country are entitled to one optometrist, but the government does not make such a provision.”
Initially, Vinsighte set out to build a hardware product but did not get the adequate funding needed, and then they pivoted to a software solution. “Investors being careful or too careful while choosing their investment is a normal part of challenges faced during the early stages of investment, and we had a similar experience especially with our angel investor who was probably doubtful of the reality of our solution, but as entrepreneurs, we grew through it and today, we have been able to scale our solution and presence to the US,” Dr. Olokuntoye says. “We underwent a couple of iteration cycles to be able to come up with our current market-fit product. We believe that for any solution to make a lasting impact, a lot of research and iteration needs to be involved.”
Looking forward, Dr. Olokuntoye tells Minority Africa, “We plan to extend our reach to all schools and institutions of the visually-impaired across Nigeria and beyond and we look forward to more partnerships in this journey of fostering a more fulfilled and inclusive life for the visually impaired.”
Edited/Reviewed by Khadija Sanusi, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Vindication Alawode is a freelance journalist and research enthusiast. His research areas focus on health, technology, and social change, among others.

created: February 8, 2023

author: Vindication Alawode


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Audio solar Bible helping blind and low vision Christians in Kenya - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
July 19, 2022
Braille Bibles are expensive and one can cost up to $1000, making them inaccessible to millions of rural Africans. In Kenya, an audio solar Bible is providing an alternative and helping blind and low vision Christians access materials crucial to their faith.
Produced by Caleb Okereke. Edited by Jamie Intwari.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.


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Authors - Minority Africa
Alison Lemeri Francis is a 2022 Minority Africa Fellow. He is a South Sudanese refugee, Cassandra Roxburgh is an Associate Editor at Minority Africa. Fae is a South African journalist predominantly covering the environment, Elizabeth Mang'eni is an advocate for women with disabilities and a Public Voices Fellow on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls. She is the co-founder of the You4She Initiative, Megan S Lee is a videographer at Minority Africa. She hails from San Dimas, Taiwo Hassan is a freelance journalist from Lagos


text: Auto Draft - Minority Africa


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Behind every purple door in this Zimbabwean community, someone is ready to assist women facing abuse - Minority Africa
Regina Pasipanodya
April 21, 2024
On a November night in 2023, Mercy Matovera* escaped from the relentless brutality within the walls of her own home. For far too long, she had endured her husband’s frequent fits of rage, with physical blows that came two or three times a week.
But on this fateful night, Matovera reached her breaking point.
The heavy shadows offered her a fleeting sense of safety as she stumbled along the dusty path, her heart racing with adrenaline. Desperate to shield herself and her nine-month-old baby girl strapped to her back, she embarked on a perilous journey in search of sanctuary.
“When I saw the light of a lantern through the window of one of the houses that were close to the pathway, I quickly stopped and walked towards the house,” says Matovera.
She knocked on the door, hoping that she could find shelter, but the house owner refused to open the door to “strangers.” Instead, she urged Matovera to seek help elsewhere, to try another door; maybe she would find someone willing to help a stranger.
Luckily, Matovera found that house. It was a house with a purple door.
“Behind this (purple) door, I found a middle-aged lady who, without any hesitation, asked me to come inside and offered a cup of water to drink,” Matovera recalls. “She told me that her name was Melody Nyakudanga, one of the elderly in the community.”
Nyakudanga (65) is one of the senior citizens in Epworth, a peri-urban community about 17 km from the Harare Central Business District in Zimbabwe.
She gave Matovera something to eat and a place to sleep. “[Nyakudanga] assured me that everything was going to be okay,” says Matovera.
In Zimbabwe, gender-based violence (GBV), which encompasses three main categories—Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), sexual abuse, and child marriage—remains a silent epidemic, particularly affecting married women.
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), approximately 1 in 3 women in Zimbabwe aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical violence, while 1 in 4 have faced sexual violence since adolescence.
In November 2023, during the annual 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) revealed that about 18,907 cases of domestic abuse were recorded across the country between January and October, of which 16,444 were reported by women while 2,463 cases were reported by men against women. During the same period, 26 women lost their lives due to GBV.
The statistics indicate that GBV cases in Zimbabwe have been on the rise; 17,244 cases were reported in 2013, and the same period showed a 9.6 per cent rise.
National Police spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi urged communities to continue giving credence to the issues of peace and tranquillity in families.
“When couples have challenges, only engagement and discussions can solve the differences, and in those circles that we live, let us help each other and solve matters without any violence,” he tells Minority Africa.
Tragically, violence has resulted in loss of life, with some women resorting to suicide due to lack of support.
Purple Door pioneer Chipo Tsitsi Mlambo of the RhoNaFlo Foundation—a facility-based safe and quality childbirth— believes societal norms play a significant role in perpetuating GBV.
“According to our African belief, girls are raised to believe that they should not question or challenge any form of behaviour of their husbands,” Mlambo says. “They are taught and encouraged to endure pain in silence to protect marital bonds, making it taboo and disrespectful to report abusive partners to the police.”
Rooted in cultural norms and social structures, gender-based violence, especially IPV, is often used by men to maintain control over women within marriages, and usually, survivors bear not only physical scars but also emotional wounds that persist throughout their lives.
In 2022, to break this cycle of silence, Mlambo, working with older women in Epworth who for years have seen and lived with this kind of pain, established the Purple Door Initiative where they would identify strong and warm individuals to provide safe havens to desperate women and girls suffering gender-based abuse.
“For me, Epworth is a community where young girls are getting married at a young age due to poverty,” Mlambo says. “If you ask that young girl today if they can report any form of abuse to the police if need be, they say no, they cannot.”
According to her, the colour, ‘purple,’ signifies a safe space for any woman who needs support in desperate times of abuse.
“Most of them fear the police, maybe due to age. They are kids,” Mlambo states with concern.
“Working with the community, we decided to train community-based advocates to become the first port of call during the time of need of abused women, and we are looking forward to introducing this initiative in other areas across the country,” she adds.
Alous Nyamazana, a director of Fathers Against Abuse, an organisation working to combat abuse by involving fathers and young men, states that gender-based violence issues require collective action and awareness and applauds the pioneers of the Purple Door Initiative.
“It’s time to empower survivors and challenge harmful norms, fostering a safer environment for all,” he says.
Nyakudanga concurs, saying that Epworth has never been a safe place for women.
“As someone who has been living in this community for more than 30 years now, I have seen the worst where women lead a miserable life at the hands of their husbands,” she says. “Most of the women are dependent; they cannot fend for themselves, considering that they get married before they can even finish school.”
Nyakudanga further explains that the situation was so bad that when Mlambo discussed the idea for Purple Door Initiative, “We as the elders of the community agreed and had our doors painted purple, a symbol of a safe space.”
“Now, most people in my area know that behind every purple door, there is someone ready to assist them when facing any form of abuse,” she adds.
According to Mlambo, once victims get to the respite (home with a purple door), they get a place to live for a maximum of seven days, receiving counselling from trained advocates. If necessary, advocates will accompany them to report their cases to the Victim Friendly Units at the police station.
“However, a challenge that we have been facing is when victims are supposed to report the matter to the police and the women hesitate, saying they cannot get their husbands arrested,” Nyakudanga says. “In such a scenario, we would engage both their parents and try to get their issues settled so that they can live with each other in peace.”
Nyakudanga adds that through this approach, many marriages have been saved, and she has witnessed some husbands change their ways.
In Matovera’s case, she is now back with her husband.
“We have been going for counselling sessions at Nyakudanga’s house and I can see the changes in his behaviour,” she says. “[It is] something promising.”
* Names have been changed to protect identities
Edited and Reviewed by: PK Cross, Uzoma Ihejirika, and Caleb Okereke.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Regina Rumbidzai Pasipanodya is an award winning multimedia journalist based in Harare, Zimbabwe. With over five years of experience, she has worked as a freelance reporter, providing media consultancy, and created multimedia content. Regina’s primary focus is on human interest issues, and she is deeply committed to amplifying the voices of the Zimbabwean community, addressing social, economic, political, and environmental concerns. Since 2013, Regina has collaborated with both public and private partners on documentary projects aimed at raising awareness about community issues. Beyond her journalistic pursuits, she enjoys watching documentaries, traveling, indulging in writing and reading novels and magazines. In 2023, Regina received notable recognition: she was honoured as the SOGIE-Northern Region Reporter of the Year (NJAMA) and she secured the 2nd Runner Up position in the Isu Elihle Awards 2023 (Media Matters Africa), an award that celebrates those who give voice to children’s perspectives.

author: Regina Pasipanodya


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Breastfeeding in Uganda’s informal sector - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
August 8, 2021
Kampala, Uganda — Minority Africa. WHO recommends that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life and for up to two years. In Uganda, female employees are entitled to 60 working days of fully paid maternity leave. But how does this translate to mothers working in the informal sector?
This post is published as part of Minority Africa’s Breast Series, a collection of reports, analysis, and opinions aimed towards demystifying and decolonizing the discourse around breasts for African women. To view more in this series, click here.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.

created: August 8, 2021


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Cameroon: How churches are a breeding ground for the exclusion of Persons with Disabilities - Minority Africa
Kesah Princely
January 16, 2023
In 2017, a friend invited me to a church in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s Northwest region. I hoped to improve my relationship with God through the pastor’s message.  I traveled hundreds of kilometres just to attend the program, which I saw as a life-changing opportunity. But I received a shocker, though, when the same pastor chose to castigate me for being blind.
“God has told me that you will transform from a beggar to someone with a purpose in life because your sight will be restored today,” the pastor declared. I was angered by this. I had never been a beggar on the street but like many other PWDs, I was condemned to this fate because of my disability.
I left the church saddened.
As part of the constant exclusion of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Cameroon, churches have become exclusionary spaces. Many pastors look down at PWDs as beggars seeking miraculous healing, rather than attending to their spiritual needs. Based on their preaching, it would seem that the churches view PWDs as souls not worthy of spiritual nourishment but instead destined for an eternity in hell. This view, for many of its problems, means that PWDs continue to be treated as sites of potential healing and perpetually “not whole” rather than individuals already complete.
On another occasion in 2018, I was invited onto a sports radio programme on  Revival Gospel Radio, a Christian channel in Buea, Cameroon’s Southwest region. As a student-cum-journalist with a passion for sports at the time, I honored the invitation to sit on the panel with top-notch football analysts that Saturday morning. I was so excited that I made sure to arrive at the studio thirty minutes before the broadcast. However, my excitement was cut short by a pastor who had just rounded off his show.
“Stand outside and wait, let me come and attend to you when I am done inside,” the pastor told me. My body weakened as if heavy blows were raining down upon me. The pastor had assumed I was coming to beg for either healing or money.
I tried to explain that I had been invited as a panelist for the sports radio programme but he did not believe me; instead, he told me to wait so that he could give me money to eat breakfast. Irritated and frustrated, I placed a call to Chris, the anchor of the sports program, asking him to come to get me outside. I don’t know how the pastor felt when he saw me moving into the studio. However, I was later told that the pastor was amazed to hear me display a good mastery of local and foreign football.
I used to think that the church could be a haven from the constant discrimination PWDs experience in Cameroon. However, it has become increasingly apparent that the church harbors the exact resentment for PWDs. The multitude of negative experiences shows that churches are not places where PWDs can find solace and joy. The church makes us lose our identity and we are reduced to the characteristics of our disability rather than being identified by our name or behavior.
One of the ways the church keeps away PWDs is by often viewing them as being less human. Most churches consider us to be possessed by demons. Pastors always want to heal us before we can have equal status with the “normal” Christians. This is why PWDs are often viewed as sick people in dire need of healing. Many church leaders subscribe to the charity model of disability in which PWDs are viewed as victims of their circumstances who should be pitied. This viewpoint casts PWDs as tragic victims of their disabilities who have nothing to offer and need charitable donations to live. As a result, churches in Cameroon impose the social ostracisation of the charity model onto the structure of churches whereby disability is seen as an obstacle to contributing money to the church. In their eyes, PWDs cannot provide anything to the church as we constantly demand charity.
Another manifestation of exclusion can be seen in the way that churches are designed in Cameroon. Many church buildings don’t make provision for PWDs trying to access church buildings. The most egregious example is the lack of ramps in churches. The lack of ramps is a sign of PWDs not being welcomed in the church. The architectural design mirrors the exclusion of the clergy, creating a space that harbors inherent hostility towards the needs of PWDs.
Owing to these barriers, most of us prefer to stay off church activities than to go through repeated instances of embarrassment. It will be meaningful if “men of God” could learn to understand that having an impairment does not make one less human.
Edited/Reviewed by: Cassandra Roxburgh, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Kesah Princely is a fellow at Minority Africa. Princely is a Cameroonian Journalist and a disability advocate and is the founder and Executive Director of TWIF NEWS, a digital news website which aims to shine a light on disability in Cameroon. He spends time advocating for the inclusion and participation in mainstream activities of persons with disabilities through his journalism for change.

created: January 16, 2023

author: Kesah Princely


text:
Cameroon’s armed conflict is asking this ethnic group to pick sides - Minority Africa
Shuimo Trust
January 12, 2024
Buea, Cameroon (Minority Africa) — On a chill afternoon in January 2021, a group of gun-wielding men believed to be separatist fighters besieged Orti, a village on the outskirts of Ndu, a town in the conflict-affected Northwest region of Cameroon. Aissatou, a member of the indigenous Fulani people (Mbororos), a minority and disadvantaged group in Cameroon, had prepared her husband’s favourite meal (okra and cassava paste) and was about to serve it when she heard incessant gunshots.
“We were terrified,” Aissatou, now 24, recalls. “I and my two children laid flat on the floor to escape from stray bullets. We do that whenever we hear gunshots.” Her husband had gone out to look after their cattle and had exceeded the time he would usually come home. Though worried, she was sure her husband would find his way back home amidst the gunshots as he always does.
At about 7 pm, Aissatou received the news of her husband’s whereabouts: he was drowning in his pool of blood at the village square. The separatist militia had shot him.
“I fainted immediately after I heard the news. I probably would have followed my husband if Allah had not intervened,” Aissatou says.
The Mbororos have been disproportionately affected by the prolonged armed conflict that has erupted in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions since 2016. A report by Amnesty International says about 162 Mbororos have been killed, 300 of their homes razed, 2500 of their cattle seized or killed, and about XAF 180 million (about $ 293,897), paid in ransom for over 102 of their kith and kin who have been kidnapped as a result of the armed conflict.
The constant violence has pushed some Mbororos to fight as militias alongside government forces against armed separatist fighters, commonly referred to as Amba Boys, who want to create a separate state for Anglophone Cameroonians.
“We don’t have a choice. We have to protect our cattle and our land from Amba Boys”, says Adamou, who fled his native, Wum, to Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest region of Cameroon, in 2020 due to constant threats and assassination attempts from separatist fighters.
Though in a new environment, Adamou is one of the main advisers and a founding member of a vigilante group in his village.
“The vigilante group is purely for self-defence. We work in collaboration with Cameroon’s military forces,” he says as he flaunts his bracelets, which he claims have magical powers and have helped him to survive numerous Amba boys’ assassination attempts. “We don’t like Amba Boys,” he says. “A top government official told us that they are out to wipe out all the Mbororos in Cameroon, and we shall not watch them do that. It would never happen,” he adds, waving his index finger in disagreement.
Historically, the Mbororos, who are primarily pastoralists, have been in perpetual conflict over land with native farmers in the northwest region of Cameroon, who make up most, if not all, the separative fighters,
Beriyuy Cajetan, a human rights activist, says Mbororos are sometimes targeted by armed separatists “just because they are Mbororos.”
“Three of my wife’s cousins, her two aunts, and 20 of my cows were killed by Amba boys before we left the village. They also threatened my life, and as a driver, it was risky for me to continue in my village,” says Aliyou Gidadoh, a taxi driver in Buea who escaped with his family from his village in Ntiswa, on the outskirts of Ndu in 2020. “Buea is comparatively safer than my village, but life here is very difficult for me and my family.”
Aliyou says he feels separated from his culture and homeland. “What makes us Mbororos is our relationship with cows. My cows, who I consider my children and also friends, have all been killed,” says Aliyou.
Still, some argue that Mbororos are a party to the armed conflict and thus deserve the constant attacks by separatists.
“Both separatist fighters and Mbororo militias have committed serious human rights violations,” says Berinyuy, who is also the head of the Department of Human Rights at the NGO Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA). “When separatist fighters attack Mbororo communities, Mbororo militias retaliate by attacking adjacent non-Mbororo communities.”
In February 2020, for example, state forces aided by armed Mbororo militias massacred about 21 civilians, including 13 children and one pregnant woman, in a locality known as Ngarbuh in the Northwest region of Cameroon.
“We are victims of circumstances. We have been unfairly targeted by separatist fighters”, says Musa, a part of the Mbororo community who had fled his village, Orti in 2021 but had to return after suffering from severe fire burns in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital, early this year. “There was no way I could continue with my job. I had nobody to take care of me in Yaoundé, and I was replaced at my job site immediately when I had this accident.”
While Aliyou continues to miss his slain cows and his village as he struggles to adapt to life in his newfound home in Buea, Aissatou is battling with post-traumatic stress disorder as scenes of her husband’s unfortunate death keep flashing in her mind.
“I have a mental breakdown almost every day,” she tells Minority Africa. “This is made worse by my 5-year-old son, who keeps asking me where his father is.”
Aissatou got married at 17, is not educated and has no skills either. “I am always in tears, thinking of how I will survive with my two children. My husband’s death has left a permanent scar in my life”, she says.
Edited/Reviewed by: Samuel Banjoko, Patricia Kisesi, Uzoma Ihejirika, and Caleb Okereke.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Shuimo Trust is a Cameroon-based journalist with a BSc in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Buea, Cameroon. He has 5 years of progressive experience as a journalist. His interests cut across environment, politics, and entertainment. He has served as editor-in-chief of the Cameroon-based environmental newspaper, Green Vision Newspaper. He is also the Founder of a political and culture blog known as Shuimo News. Shuimo Trust has also served as a communication officer for one of the leading conservation organizations in Cameroon, the Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF). He has also written for the leading pan African Newspaper, The Continent.

created: January 12, 2024

author: Shuimo Trust


text:
Can infusing western education revive northern Nigeria’s Almajiranci system? - Minority Africa
Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu
June 21, 2020
Niger, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — In January 2018, Malam Na’ibi, a 47-year-old Gbagyi man from Niger State in northern Nigeria, started travelling with a plan.
Malam Na’ibi, who owns an Almajiri school in Minna, the capital city of the state, decided to travel to the hometowns of each of the parents of his Almajirai to ask permission to enroll them in other schools providing Western education.
Armed with nothing but an analogy, he tried to convince the parents.
“I told them: we all have two hands. Your child is holding the knowledge of the Qur’an in his right hand. He’s meant to hold western knowledge in the left hand,” he says. “We, as Muslims, eat with only our right hand. Shall we then say because of that, we will cut off the left hand? No. Your child’s future prospects will be made bigger if both his hands are equipped.”
His tour was mildly successful, as ten out of the parents granted their permission and let him enrol the students at nursery and primary schools, even though they were all a bit overgrown for their classes. They sent him the fees periodically.
“It’s due to poverty. They did not have the means,” he tells Minority Africa. “But I knew that if somehow, they began to see it as a priority, as a necessity, they would make sacrifices in order to see them through school, that’s why I took the pains of visiting them all.”
However, Malam Na’ibi was still left with 30 students whose parents were unable to enrol them in schools. As a man of modest means himself, he could not sponsor their education. So he started to teach them himself.
On Thursdays and Fridays, which are the weekends of their Islamic schooling calendar, he gathers them around in front of a whiteboard and teaches them basic subjects like Maths and English. When Friday lessons became too hectic because of the Jummu’at prayers, he shifted it to Saturday.
On the days he’s unable to teach them, his 16-year-old daughter, Maryam Na’ibi teaches them herself.
She is a secondary school student, and is passionate about education, just like her father. She extended the schooling sessions to Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and twice a day: at dawn, and dusk, choosing times when they were not taking Qur’anic lessons.
“Me, I just want to be able to speak the English language. I have never missed a class since we started. I always attend. I am from Rijau, and I hardly go home. But I want to speak English whenever I go home next. So I’m really taking this thing seriously,” Ibrahim (not real name), 16, says.
He beckons to his friend who looks the same age as him. The friend approaches us.
“I attend the classes too,” the friend says. “But I am more interested in money. So I am learning embroidery and cap weaving from inside town. At the end of the day, I have little time, that’s why I am not consistent with the classes.”
When asked if he would take an opportunity to be enrolled in a school, Ibrahim’s friend nods without hesitation.
Before colonisation, an orderly system of education existed in northern Nigeria, where parents sent their children to teachers in faraway cities to acquire Islamic knowledge. It was known as Almajiranci, and the student, Almajiri.
The practice is done across the Muslim majority in West African communities. The state and emirs adequately funded it, alongside parents of the children, and other organised platforms, and this covered shelter, clothing, and feeding for the students. The system has since deteriorated after the British invasion and is not recognized as a regular schooling system.
In 2018, a survey jointly conducted by the Nigerian government and UNICEF uncovered daunting figures of out-of-school children. The survey says over 69% of the figure comes from northern Nigeria; this amounts to around nine million children. It also says most of the constituents of this figure are Almajirai.
A major criticism against the Almajiranci system – amongst others such as the absence of feeding, clothing, and security – is that although the students become well versed in Islamic matters, they are deprived of Western education and a grasp of basic English language.
The system and how poorly it is being run has been criticized for serious issues such as being centers where children are vulnerable and sometimes subjected to physical torture and even sexual abuse.
Malam Na’ibi’s home which houses over fifty Almajirai cyclically for 14 years is one of the many Almajiri schools struggling to find relevance in contemporary times.
For all its criticism, Dr. Hadiza Kere Abdulrahman, an expert in the field of Almajiranci, who researched the system for six years, believes that a total abolishment of the system will only escalate the problem, not solve it.
She wrote in an article for The Conversation, “Even though it is quite problematic as it stands, the Almajiranci system was once functional. It did not deteriorate to what it is in a day. A ban will not undo decades of decay, so the government needs political will and continuity. It needs to acknowledge the need for a more holistic reform across its education system, to find a way to integrate Almajiranci.”
Speaking to Minority Africa, she insists that a plural educational system like the one going on in Malam Na’ibi’s school is a better, more impactful approach.
“Almajiranci was always just traditionally, purely Qur’anic. Increasingly though, many are exposed to Boko,” she says. “What Malam Na’ibi is doing is just fascinating…this is what many of us have been advocating for; an educational plurality. Educational/epistemological plurality has to be the way forward. It just makes sense.”
Every day, except on weekends, Malam Na’ibi’s students assemble in clusters as early as 7 am, according to their levels of education: the beginners, which details the learning of basic things such as the Arabic alphabets and some concise Surahs/chapters.
The semi-advanced level which is usually where students, having gained an understanding of the alphabets, can recite longer chapters with ease and sometimes on their own; the advanced students are those who have completed their learning of the Qur’an and have now moved on to other books that tell them more about the religion, humanity, and science.
Some of Malam Na’ibi’s older students teach the elementary students, while he prepares the advanced students. Each of the groups arrives for classes with a high heap of scripture, awaiting their turns to be taught.
“I teach them the Qur’an, but also Seerah, Fiqh, Hadith, and Akhdari. Sometimes, I teach all grades of students, all by myself,” Malam Na’ibi says.
The lessons go on until 10 am. At night, they repeat the cycle from 8 pm to 10 pm. In a decade or more, some of these students will move away to other cities and start their own Almajiranci schools.
“I have many students that have finished from my school and gone on to other states to either start their school for other boys or learn a trade. You can’t meet them because they are no longer here. Most times, they end up doing embroidery or tailoring. Kawai, it is important for them to first acquire this knowledge before they go out into the world,” Malam Na’ibi says.
The classes are held in a space with only a cemented floor and roofing. The students unroll mats there. Then they sit in a semi-circle, leaving space for Malam Na’ibi to sit when he emerges from his room. When he comes out, they all immediately change their sitting positions to squats, eyes looking down. After he sits, they sit back.
In other settings, especially in Nupe communities, a student who runs into his Malam inside town stops wherever he is and squats, taking off his shoes and staying in that position until the Malam has passed.
Explaining the significance of this gesture as it relates to respect bordering on reverence, Isyaku Bala Ibrahim, a prominent Nupe writer and author of two books written in the language, explains:
“This has to do with the interpretation of the hadiths of the prophet on the position of a teacher or scholar to his student; a student must respect and honour a scholar or teacher. Some teachers even send their students to farm, and on other household activities like fetching water, going to the market, etc.”
Malam Na’ibi tutored under Malam Audu Nakakumi in Zaria before moving down to Minna where he, again, learned from the likes of Sheikh Nafi’u, Malam Isyaka, and Malam Garba Hakimi. After that, he started his own tutoring. He acquired Western education in Zaria, before moving on to Minna where he acquired a Diploma in Islamic studies at the Justice Fati Lami Abubakar (JFLA) college. Because he did not begin Western education until he had gone very far in Qur’anic studies, he was often the oldest in his class.
“I have plans of getting a degree from Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB) University, Lapai. Or perhaps Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Or maybe Nasarawa. I am more inclined towards IBB University though because it is closer to home,” he says.
It is this experience of Western education that inspired his tour. The children also seem to be thankful to have a blend of both Islamic knowledge and Western education.
Masa’udu, 10, is from Paiko. He is one of the Almajirai whose parents can’t enrol them in school. He makes do with Malam Na’ibi and Maryam’s homeschooling. He’s been here for a year and is very enthusiastic about learning.
“Sometimes, Malam Na’ibi teaches us. Other times, she does,” he says, pointing at Maryam Na’ibi.
“It doesn’t interfere with my Qur’anic lessons. I’m even entering a new Surah in the Qur’an tomorrow.” His voice is low and shy but excited.
He has a notebook in which he takes down his notes, and revises after the class has ended. When Maryam Na’ibi reads a story out to them from a textbook, he listens with rapt attention, his eyes fixed on her, his head drawn forward in concentration. When she asks if anyone would love to come out to read from the textbook, he half raises his hand, then brings it down; willing, but unsure.
“Sometimes, other children from the neighborhood join. They are all so eager. Most of them actually just want to be able to speak the English language. Even the ones who are already enrolled in school use the opportunity to revise what they were taught,” Maryam Na’ibi says.
There are several Masa’udus scattered around Almajiri schools in Minna where the same system of homeschooling is replicated.
Dr. Abdulrahman found in her thesis that the mainstream representation of the Almajiranci system is only “one possible set of articulations and that alternative meanings exist.”
Malam Na’ibi’s practice of Almajiranci reflects this.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu is a poet and essayist from Nigeria whose work has appeared on Popula, African Arguments, The Republic, Ake Review and elsewhere.

author: Hauwa Shaffii Nuhu


text:
Can training men help tackle GBV? This Ugandan group thinks so - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
December 8, 2023
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.

created: December 8, 2023


text: Careers - Minority Africa


text: Checkout - Minority Africa


text:
Climate change education: Teach large corporations to protect the environment - Minority Africa
Bayron van Wyk
November 14, 2022
I used to work at an NGO focused on climate change and environmental awareness. I was expected to develop educational and agricultural programmes targeting mostly rural farmers in the Kavango East and West regions to sensitise them to climate change issues. In these regions, subsistence agriculture is the primary source of livelihood for 16% and 31% of the population. The NGO’s programme encouraged local farmers to adopt sustainable agricultural practices.
In these regions, there has been contention over oil exploration and discovery. In mid-2021, Canadian-based firm ReconAfrica announced that they had discovered oil in the Kavango East and West regions. Since then, ReconAfrica has started operations for oil production. However, several environmental groups, such as Frack Free Namibia (FFN), have expressed concern over the impact of such activities on the region’s sensitive plant and animal life.
Through my work in the Kavango East and West regions, I started to think more deeply about climate change and environmental awareness programmes run by NGOs. I started questioning whom these organisations chose to target. Why are they targeting primarily rural (and poor) communities when it is clear that large corporations are causing the most harm?
I approached a few of my team leaders and shared my thoughts. I wanted us to become more involved in addressing concerns in the Kavango East and West regions over oil production. I thought we could be effective by pursuing an environmental campaign with ReconAfrica. The campaign could potentially assist in mitigating the impact of oil production on the environment.
My idea was to sensitise some of the staff of ReconAfrica through a workshop on climate change and environmental awareness issues. My team leaders, however, turned down my proposal because they thought it was bizarre to target ReconAfrica for our environmental campaigns. The work we did was to only sensitise rural and poor communities to climate change.
However, the reality is that environmental programmes depend on large corporations for financing.  These companies often only fund programmes that target rural communities. Therefore, my team leaders did not accept my proposal. This perpetuates a perception that rural communities are uneducated or not aware of environmental issues. These communities were mostly framed in this way to secure funding from international organisations. This means that the NGO would propose educating rural communities on their environmental impact to encourage them to adopt more environmentally friendly ways of living.
This perception perpetuates the belief that rural communities threaten the environment. The dependency of rural communities on wood for fuel and timber is often cited as the underlying cause of this belief. For example, about 75% and 91% of the population rely on wood for energy in the Kavango East and West regions. This is one of the reasons why NGOs primarily target rural communities for climate change and environmental campaigns.
The targeting of rural communities is largely unnecessary. These communities have their traditional knowledge about how to deal with the issues of climate change. For example, in November 2021, when I attended a workshop on climate change at the Mashare Agricultural College, the Senior Traditional Councillor for Administration, Alois Gende of the Shambyu Traditional Authority, also stressed this point.
In this workshop, we presented a newly developed programme for rural farmers on climate change mitigation primarily focused on encouraging farmers to adopt sustainable agriculture practices. Gende criticised the programme for not including the traditional knowledge of the Shambyu tribe in creating more awareness around climate change and environmental issues. For him, it was like the NGO was imposing specific ideas of climate change that were far removed from the situation of the Shambyu – especially as it relates to their present socio-economic struggles. For example, the Shambyu know when a rainy season or drought would approach them. They rely on observations of their environmental surroundings to predict the weather. Therefore, it does not make sense for the programme to use expensive technology for early warning systems. Instead, it was suggested that people from Shambyu be employed to fulfil such a role.
This should be seen in the context of broader socio-economic challenges facing the Shambyu, especially its younger population. There currently are high levels of unemployment in the Kavango East and West regions. About 62.5% and 46.8% of the population are unemployed. Even though subsistence farming exists, most of it is inadequate, leading to food shortages. In the Kavango East and West regions, roughly 92.1% and 89.2% of the population face food shortages. Therefore, it did not make sense for the Shambyu to use technological tools while the local population could be employed and provide such services to the programme. That traditional knowledge systems are generally not included in programmes by NGOs shows that the concerns of rural communities are rarely taken seriously.
This relates to views that regard rural communities as a problem to climate change and the environment rather than as equal partners in contributing to efforts at addressing climate change. It serves to frame rural communities as destructive to the environment, which is based on their present socio-economic challenges. Moreover, it downplays the role played by large corporations in furthering environmental destruction. There have been several cases of companies contributing towards environmental destruction. In 2014 Bosveld Phosphate’s industrial activities in the Kruger National resulted in the pollution of the Selati River.
This leads to ill-conceived development programmes by NGOs that do not speak to the aspirations of local communities, resulting in limited socio-economic changes envisioned by these programmes. Therefore, NGOs should include traditional knowledge systems in their programs to ensure more effective results. In addition, large corporations should engage in more introspection and become aware of their role in environmental destruction. Therefore, their financing programmes should be more encompassing and include climate change and environmental awareness in corporations (and not only rural communities). This can assist in strengthening programmes on climate change and environmental awareness.
Edited by Cassandra Roxburgh and Uzoma Ihejirika
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Bayron van Wyk is a 2022 Minority Africa fellow from Namibia. van Wyk’s life journey began in the small town of Rehoboth in southern Namibia where he was born. As a child, he struggled with his sexuality because of the stigma associated with being openly gay. It took him a long while to accept who he was and to be comfortable with his own sexuality. He is a human rights activist, writer and scholar interested in LGBTIQA+, environmental and climate change issues. Currently, van Wyk is studying in Cape Town, South Africa. His work focuses on LGBTIQA+ organizing in Namibia and through his work, he hopes to bring about more social justice for LGBTIQA+ persons living in Namibia.

created: November 14, 2022

author: Bayron van Wyk


text:
“Cloud”: The Ugandan dancer stunting his way to acceptance - Minority Africa
Aida Namukose
October 30, 2022
Jinja, Uganda (Minority Africa) — Cloud did not know that he was different until the year he turned 11. It was the same year his family moved from the Acholi region in Northern Uganda to Jinja in the East where the Basoga people dominate.
Alongside his 16-year-old  brother, he was enrolled in a boarding school where this difference was further exemplified.
“Everyone spoke to each other in a language we didn’t understand, they ate different foods, and most of them even looked different,” Cloud, who is now 26 years old, tells Minority Africa. “Our people are typically tall, lean and dark-skinned. That look is celebrated and looked for in models now but back then it really wasn’t.”
By “our people,” he is referring to the Lango, Acholi and Japadhola tribes from Northern Uganda who have historically been marginalized.
The recent history of Northern Uganda is highly marred by the conflict between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which raged on for two decades up until 2006. It left about 1.8 million people displaced.
This conflict exacerbated poverty and had long-lasting effects on different areas of life such as education, infrastructure, people’s assets, and wellbeing – leaving the region with some of the worst development indicators in the world.
Primary school attendance declined by approximately 20% between 2013 and 2018, and only 5% of those that were displaced by the war went on to complete their secondary education. There are also more disturbing trends of human trafficking– including a case of 35 girls who were found in Kenya and returned after being trafficked from the Karamoja region in North-East Uganda in August 2021.
A report by ODI stated that: ‘Northern Ugandans continue to live with a sense of loss, injustice, neglect and a widespread sentiment that post-conflict life has not lived up to its promise.’ Because of social factors and sentiments like these, many families like Cloud’s moved to different parts of the country to seek a more stable life.
“Just my name was a big giveaway that I wasn’t from the same place,” said Cloud, who at the time went by his birth name, which he inherited from his father. As a young boy, he found it hard to take pride in a name that his peers teased him about, and wished that he could change that aspect and many others about himself.
Emmanuel Weere, a 36-year-old social researcher and development worker from Uganda explains that tribalism is a long-standing issue in Uganda, dating back to the days of colonialism.
“The way that the British divided the country and assigned power has a lot to do with how things are now and perceptions people hold until today. Whereas power was previously assigned based on war and natural wealth, it was now centralized and re-distributed by the British,” Weere explains.
“Once Kampala became the capital city, those in close proximity received better education, took administrative jobs and made more money, which then translated into a sense of superiority amongst those from that area,” he says. “The north being one of the farthest regions from the city, coupled with the civil war, caused it to be perceived as a low-status area. This inequality carried on long after Independence, and is fueled by stories that hold sentiments of prejudice.”
“Some of the discrimination was subtle and some of it wasn’t,” Cloud recalls about his experience. “It was hard to find a friend group to sit and eat meals with as they usually talked in a different language. The teachers would sometimes say things like ‘That’s why your people are stupid’ right in front of the whole class.”
“Dating was impossible, as no girl wanted to be seen with someone that was considered low class,” he adds. “The first few months were a miserable time, and I often questioned why our parents had brought us here.”
With no clear friend group to pass the time with, Cloud spent his weekends in the common area watching the shared TV with a few other students. Most of the girls wanted to watch soap operas while the boys preferred football. To reach a compromise, they usually ended up watching music videos. That was how the world of dance was introduced to Cloud. He watched hours of pop, hip-hop and rap music videos on MTV and TRACE channels.
“At that time Chris Brown and Usher were the hot artists, and those guys could dance,” he says. He also noticed that the girls liked the dancing stars. “Whenever they’d come on the screen, you’d see the girls get excited and the boys look on with a sense of admiration. There was power in that, and I thought maybe if I could learn a few moves then that could become something really interesting about myself.”
Cloud started practicing behind the dormitories or in empty classrooms at night, replicating what he saw on the screen. His debut performance was at a school dance, which is commonly known in Uganda as Kadanke and is set up similar to a club setting.
“We used to have Kadanke sessions about once a month, and there everyone was free to dance as they pleased and bring out their best moves,” Cloud says. “The best dancer would usually become surrounded by people, cheering them on and copying their moves. I was so surprised when this started happening to me, and it made me feel so proud and popular. I remember one of my friends commenting on my legwork, `It’s like you have no feet man, you move like a cloud’.”
And that reference birthed his new identity, Cloud. He continued attending every Kadanke session and then started performing at assemblies and eventually at inter-school events and talent shows.
“Getting to perform in front of another school was truly a ticket to fame in high school,” he says. “Once people started knowing me as a dancer, it was like all the negative associations that came with my tribe were forgotten. I even got a girlfriend, and for my 15-year-old  self, that was making it.”
After high school, Cloud took a few years off schooling to pursue a career in dance and save up money before he enrolled in university. During that time, he joined a dance crew called Street Dance Force and they would practice and perform together, while incorporating different art forms such as rap and DJing in their work.
Through Street Dance Force, he met his friend, Ram MC, and together they founded Talanta Youth Movement, which uses hip-hop as a tool for positive social change. They train young men in Jinja in hip-hop, dance, rap, and graffiti, giving them a creative outlet, a safe space and a chance to perform.
“We wanted the next generation of kids in Jinja to be good people and good dancers,” Cloud says. “We targeted children for whom this would be an unlikely outcome; those living in the ghetto, those who didn’t have an education, and of course people that felt out of place like me. I knew how much dance had helped me in my own life and believed it could do the same for these young boys. As men I feel it is easier to get lost in our heads and succumb to bad deeds when we feel discriminated against, and this is what I’m hoping to avoid.”
Eventually, Cloud had to pause his work with the organization to pursue his degree in social work at Kyambogo University in Kampala. He recently graduated and hopes to use this access and qualification to be able to reach even more youth, and spread the gospel of breakdance for positivity, fitness, acceptance and social change.
“As people move more freely around the country, and schools are populated with students from different tribes, we [should] think of ourselves as just Ugandans, as opposed to different tribes,” Weere says as regards the way forward. “Ideally, we should be able to break free of all forms of sectarianism, and just acknowledge that we are all human. First and foremost.”
While the region of Northern Uganda continues to heal from the wounds of war, Ugandans continue to contend with its effects on both the people and perceptions of that area.
“People are taught to reject difference, instead of being curious or accepting of it,” Cloud says. “People from Northern Uganda still face negative stereotypes; I guess everyone does. I think that showing people who you really are can change their mind, and we can also do it through art and dance and stories.”
He adds, “These days, I happily introduce myself with both names, and I wish for everyone the pleasure to do so.”
Edited by Mamaponya Motsai, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Aida Namukose is a 2022 Minority Africa Fellow. Aida is a 22 year old photographer, videographer and all round creative from Jinja, Uganda. Her specialty is portraits, and she loves meeting new people and capturing their essence with her lens. She hopes to capture and write about stigmatized communities in Uganda, contributing to making a more accepting society as a whole. In her free time she enjoys swimming in the river, learning about spirituality and eating groundnut sauce.

created: October 30, 2022

author: Aida Namukose


text:
‘Gender hegemony’: How colonialism distorted African perspectives of trans identity - Minority Africa
Cassandra Roxburgh
March 31, 2022
Image description: An illustration of a person standing in front of a mirror with their hands lifted up. They are dressed in a green hoodie that’s slightly folded and grey pants. They are also wearing beige sneakers and a maroon face cap and there’s a mirror behind them as well. In the mirror in front of them is a reflection of a feminine presenting person dressed in a mustard blouse, black short, and has black flowing hair.
As a non-binary trans woman, my usual gender presentation does not attune with the typical ideas regarding feminity. I realized this a while ago while living in Tamboerskloof, an area in the center of Cape Town, South Africa. I was having a bad day and wanted to get some snacks from my local grocery store. I was wearing no make-up, a baggy band shirt, and a comfy pair of sweatpants.
I made the five-minute walk down the road to get myself some ice cream and a bottle of wine. As I walked back to my apartment, two men followed me home, yelling transphobic slurs at me. Eventually, the two men cornered me outside my apartment and threatened to “fix me” with sexual violence. I made the same walk two weeks later in a dress and make-up with zero harassment. I learned a lesson that day. I was putting my life on the line if I ventured into the city center without appearing vaguely feminine.
This forced me to start to think about African societal perceptions of womanhood and femininity and how much of what we tout to be African ideas of gender were set up and continue to be propped by colonialism and its many instruments.
The misguided belief that queerness is wholly “un-African” is cited as the justification for assaults on trans identity. Yet these beliefs are a misrepresentation of Africa’s history and cultural identity. The anthropological and historical records show clear examples of analogues to queer identity that existed in African society before colonialism and the steady advance of Western imperialism.
Records from the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition speak about an enslaved African called Antonio who took the female alias of Vitoria upon her arrival in Portugal from Benin. Her presentation was slightly ambiguous, but she styled herself and conducted herself as a woman. Vitoria earned a living as a sex worker on the streets of Lisbon and witnesses described her as using feminine gestures to draw her clients’ attention. For example, when she saw two Flemish men pass her house, she winked at them like a ‘woman’.
Additionally, she was often seen walking from Lisbon’s riverfront with a water vessel on her head. This behavior was viewed as commonplace for  women, as they often gathered water from the Chafariz de El-Rei (King’s Fountain).
Vitoria’s neighbours gossiped and speculated about her actual sex. Some claimed she was a man, while others insisted that she was castrated. The reality was that it seemed like Vitoria concealed her penis by tucking it, albeit in a much more rudimentary fashion than what is done in the 21st century. She would tie a ribbon around her penis, pulling it back and binding it to her leg.
Eventually, the Inquisition arrested Vitoria on charges of sodomy. Vitoria insisted that she was a woman and had the anatomy to prove it during her questioning. The Inquisitors did not believe her, demanding to know whether she created her female anatomy or whether it was the result of some illness. Vitoria answered that she was born with it and that many others in Benin were like her. Ultimately, the Inquisitors subjected her to a brutal, undignified medical examination. The medical report concluded that Vitoria had male genitalia. She was given a life sentence as an enslaved person in the king’s galleys for committing the “sin of sodomy”.
Vitoria’s name was the first among a handful of transgender Africans who appeared in the records of the Portuguese Inquisition between 1550 and 1730. In Western history, their names are lost to the archival footnotes of a sweeping inquisition. The entries read as the simplistic persecution of the same-sex behaviours of transgender Africans. However, their names have significant cultural value in the context of queer identity in Africa.
Their names are further proof of analogues to trans identity appearing within several pre-colonial African societies. What it meant to be a woman in many African pre-colonial societies was not rigid. Many African cultures had transgressive gender performances built into their cultural fabric.
For example, during precolonial times, the mudoko dako, effeminate males among the Langi of northern Uganda, were treated as women and could marry men. The Mwami prophets of the Ila people in Zambia were men who dressed as women, went about traditional women’s work and slept with women without having sex with them. Among the Lugbara people, transgender individuals often carried out communication with the spirit world.  Due to the duality of their existence, their qualities meant they were better suited to serve as messengers between the human and spirit worlds. Transgender women mediums are named okule (“like women”), and transgender men mediums are called agule (“like men”). The chibados of Angola were male diviners who channeled feminine spirits by acting like women.
The commonality between many of these examples is that they inhabited a spiritual role within their respective societies. They possessed a dualistic gender identity, giving them unique power to communicate with the spiritual realm. There is a strong correlation between trans identity and being spiritually powerful in precolonial African societies.
However, it would be anachronistic to call these ways of being “transgender”. Instead, we would retrofit pre-colonial cultural practices into gender categories that we use in the twenty-first century. Queer scholars only developed the terminology of modern trans existence in the 1980 and placing unique spiritual practices, like that of the chibados, into a Western category of gender identity strips away the nuance of the nonconformity in pre-colonial African society.
It is important to note that the nonconformity in precolonial Africa does not map perfectly to modern trans identity.
Colonialism forced the rigid Western gender hegemony onto African societies. The gendered worldview of colonists did not easily map onto the societies they encountered. “There is among the Angolan pagan much sodomy,” wrote one Portuguese soldier in 1681, “sharing one with the other their dirtiness and filth, dressing like women.”
The transgressive gender performances became the target of efforts to “civilize” African societies. Religion was used as a means to oppress traditional African spiritual practices. The church disseminated messages that people who did conform to the Western ideal of men and women could negatively influence Christian colonial society. As part of their exploitation and subjugation of the African continent, the colonial project baked transphobia into the fabric of postcolonial Africa.
When the colonists extended their empires to Africa, trans identity was an offense in their lands. Imperialism exported these crimes to Africa, creating new crimes that did not exist before. However, as the former colonies started gaining independence in the 20th century, the colonial empires had already done away with the criminalisation of queer identity. The exported transphobic laws provided effective ammunition for repressive post-independence African governments.
The political elite of Africa rewrote the history of African sexualities, annihilating trans identity to bolster their control over the political and social context. This revisionist history asserts their control over their nation’s identities, and citizens come to depend upon the authorities for their collective sense of self.
In their desperate attempts to maintain political legitimacy, African leaders have created an enviroment where transgender people are frequently persecuted. Furthermore, their invocation of a colonial gender hegemony that holds no room for gender nonconformity, despite the Africanness of that nonconformity, forces trans African people to live in constant fear.
The colonial construction of transphobia, and the continued enforcement of the gender hegemony, have created an environment in which transgender people have to conform to idealised depictions of femininity and masculinity to find a sense of community and safety.
If I have to go to the centre of Cape Town, or some of its conservative suburbs, I am more inclined to present more feminine than I would for visiting my local queer cafe. The process is exhausting. I live in constant fear when I go into areas like Sea Point, which claims to be a queer hub, or Observatory, which is lauded by many as a melting pot of queer culture, that I will relive experiences that have left me traumatised.
I have to be constantly worried about whether someone will decide that my clothing screams “man” and harass me.
Globally, trans women are expected to pursue hyper-femininity. If a trans woman doesn’t embody idealized visions of femininity (long hair, contoured makeup, tucking, tight dresses etc.), then their womanhood is questioned. Their mannerisms have to conform to the desires of the male gaze and the prescripts of the cis heteropatriarchy.
In the West, the pursuit of hyper-femininity is enforced mainly as a cultural requirement. The assimilationist culture of particular trans communities uses hyperfeminine ideals as a means to gatekeep trans identity. However, in Africa, a large part of conforming to the ideals of femininity is a matter of safety. We don’t choose to pass, out of a desire to achieve an idealized vision, but rather out of sheer necessity.
Forcing people to step outside of their preferred performance of gender to conform to a narrow prescription of womanhood eliminates their agency. It is crucial for this conversation to begin with an understanding that, for African trans people, the fires of transphobia which in turn lead to a performance of gender continue to be stoked by the constructs of Western imperialism.
Conformity is necessary for our survival, and that duality should be present in the discourse around gender obedience among African trans people.
We are trying to stay alive.
Edited/Reviewed by Caleb Okereke, Uzoma Ihejirika, and PK Cross.
a non-binar
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Cassandra Roxburgh is an Associate Editor at Minority Africa. Fae is a South African journalist predominantly covering the environment, transgender liberation, and the intersection between activism and technology. Fae has written for Yes! Magazine, Mail and Guardian, and News24. Cassandra holds an LLB from the University of Stellenbosch, and is currently finishing faer LLM thesis on corporate liability for environmental harms in Africa.

author: Cassandra Roxburgh


text:
Coming Out In Nigeria Is A Difficult Journey - Minority Africa
Rabiat Madaki
September 12, 2022
In his sophomore year of college, 21-year-old Alex came out as gay to his middle-aged conservative Yoruba mother. He had gotten tired of the hetero-normative ideals his mother forced on him. “She was always going on about when I’ll get a wife and kids,” he says. During one of her tirades about having a traditional family, Alex snapped and decided to come out.
“I had considered it for a while, but the thing about coming out is that you don’t really plan for it. It just happens, it’s not like today you wake up and say you’re coming out,” he says.
Much like many conservative parents, Alex’s mother viewed his sexuality as a problem that needed spiritual intervention and she immediately dragged him to see a pastor to “cure” his homosexuality. Conversion therapy is an all too common problem that many LGBTQ+ youths from conservative backgrounds endure. Such negative reactions to coming out is mostly prevalent in deeply religious and conservative households.
The pastor who Alex’s mother took him to wanted him to stay for deliverance in a section of the church where they starved people for days or weeks. On learning this, a shaken Alex retracted his statement about being gay, telling his mum, “I’m feeling better now. I don’t have that feeling I told you about; it went away the moment I saw that pastor. That thing about deliverance, mum, I’m not going.”
A survey by Nigerian NGOThe Initiative for Human Rights (TIERs) found that 49% of interviewed queer Nigerians had undergone conversion therapy while 51% said they hadn’t. Of this 51% fraction, the study did not account for people like Alex who narrowly escaped any form of conversion therapy. Further reports revealed that 36% percent of those that didn’t undergo conversion knew someone who had.
There is limited data on how many queer Nigerians have undergone conversion therapy. The majority of Nigerians identify as Christian or Muslim, which creates room to speculate that a large number of people may have undergone conversion therapy. While this may be true, there exists a fraction of Nigerians who are receptive to their gay loved ones that come out.
Alex’s brothers, who were the first people he came out to, showed support and were understanding. Still, Alex yearned for his mother’s validation even though he knew of the strong traditional and conservative ideas she held. After the initial negative experience, he had to come out a second time to his mother.
This time the message was clearer, but she still disapproves of his sexuality, often insisting that he should “switch to a girl.” Alex is 28 now and while they have their differences, he and his mother have a harmonious relationship.
For some queer people, coming out and living their sexuality to the knowledge of their conservative family is simply not an option. LGBTQIA Nigerians who embrace their sexuality often risk the possibility of being ostracised by their church and family. Favour, a 25-year-old lesbian and the daughter of a pastor, fears outright exile if she comes out to her family “My parents are unpredictable,” she explains. She once tried to tell her closest cousin that she was a lesbian, but the cousin was disappointed so Favour dismissed the reveal as a joke. “Maybe sometime soon I’ll have the courage to tell my family, but I’m not ready.”
In her social life, Favour isn’t particularly secretive about her sexuality; however, she is selective about to whom she discloses information. “Not all of my friends know, but just the few that do are okay with it,” she explains. Soon after she came out, she found her LGBTQ+ community through social media. “People were taking hints from my status uploads and going ‘are you gay? I’m gay too.”
”I think the best part of being gay is the community, everyone is so free,” Favour adds as she recalls how the LGBT+ community was a haven when she struggled with being confident in her sexuality. While Favour has a strong support system in the community, she lacks this in her close friendships. One of her closest friends is a performative ally who reads queer books and writes about them but believes that homosexuality is a sin. “She has no idea her two best friends are gay,” Favour remarks. Despite this performative allyship, Favour still stays friends as ”some people are indispensable.”
The importance of social support might be overlooked but it plays a crucial role in the lives of queer youths. Studies show that a lack of support from friends and family can negatively impact the mental health of young queer youths that are yet to fully embrace their identities. Queer individuals who receive low or zero social support are likely to struggle with accepting their sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus, a lack of support can lead to shame, internalised homophobia and identity struggle.
The exact nature of the identity struggle differs from person to person. Some people experience struggles motivated by religious ostracization, while others deal with internalised shame. John, a 20-year-old bisexual man, often questioned his sexuality while growing up. His struggle was not motivated by religion, but rather by shame. “I questioned myself a couple of times about why I would even think or want something like that — this was even after I accepted it [sexuality],” he says.
The shame soon dissipated when John got exposed to positive media on LGBTQIA. He now attributes his shame to the social stigma attached to being queer as well as false information about queer people. To this day, John still suffers from this social stigma. He explains that the stigma affects his love life by reducing his chances of finding openly gay romantic partners.
”Finding a gay man in Nigeria is like finding a bluebird,” he says. John admits that he knows a few gay men but he says ”it’s just online. They got my contact from friends that know I’m bisexual.” He adds that ”unlike a heterosexual relationship, there aren’t diverse options of partners which makes it hard to find a relationship especially when you consider that most gay men blend [in] with straight people.”
On the other hand, Alex’s experience was the opposite. As a femme gay man, he easily attracts other gay men so meeting queer men has never been an issue.
Similar to John, Favour meets potential romantic partners on social media but where the two differ is that she takes it outside of just online interactions. ”If I’m into someone, if the person is queer like me and we like each other, we get together and it ends wherever it ends,” she explains.
Lesbian relationships don’t come without their caveats. The biggest issue that Favour faces is the lack of commitment. ”Most lesbians don’t see it as a real relationship as opposed to a normal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. They mostly think it’s about sex,” she says.
For queer people that have difficulty finding partners and a community, queer parties are the alternative to explore. But it is also not an entirely safe place to meet queer people.
“Some people are just there to bait others,” Favour says. “They call it kito. They pretend to be queer, organizing queer parties, offering jobs for queer people only for queer people to show up and get beaten and harassed. Maybe even raped.” Kito is just one of the many prejudices that plague LGBTQIA people in Nigeria. These violent acts are propelled and supported by a large number of the population. In most cases, they often go unpunished due to the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition act.
The Same Marriage Prohibition Act or SSMPA, passed into law in 2014, places a ban on same-sex unions. It prohibits cohabitation of same-sex partners, displays of public affection between same-sex partners and bars LGBTQIA organisations and clubs. Offenders risk a jail time of 14 years. The legislation also stipulates 10-year imprisonment for queer supporters and human rights activists that speak against the law.
Since the SSMPA was enacted, the international non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports a 214 percent increase in violence against LGBTQIA people from 2014 to 2019. HRW blames this increase on the Nigerian government for authorizing and perpetrating the abuse of queer people under a vague scope of the law that gives civilians the authority to attack and infringe the human rights of LGBTQIA.
As highlighted by HRW, this legislation unjustly denounces the human rights of minorities by exposing them to discrimination. While there has been only one prosecution under SSMPA, the passage of the law gave rise to mob violence, targeted attacks, arbitrary arrest, unlawful detention, and collection of bribes, amongst other things.
The threat of violence created by SSPMA reveals the harsh reality for sexual minorities in Nigeria. Queer people are left with discretion as the only form of protection.
Many queer people are forced to hide their identity to function in society. The socio-political landscape of Nigeria demands that queer people stifle their self-expression to move freely.  ”The reality is we know for a fact that the law is not on our side in this part of the world,” – Alex explains. The once free college student is now a 28-year-old civil servant with higher stakes of a career to look out for. When asked if time has changed his keenness to disclose his sexuality, Alex says: “In the past when I was asked about a girlfriend, I just go ‘I’m not into girls.’ Now, I face the question alone and say, ‘I don’t have one.’ I don’t have to tell you I’m queer because that wasn’t what you asked.”
Queer Nigerians desire to be out and free, but the burdens of that visibility weigh heavily on the shoulders of activists. Many are forced into silence by the cruel reality of everyday existence, while intra-community disputes often create backlashes on social media. The reality of coming out in Nigeria is one plagued by ostracization and violence
Despite this, Alex is glad that he came out. “These days with cruel [things] happening all around to queer folks? A great number of people may not be so encouraged to come out,” he says.
“It’s a cruel world out there for queer folks if they come out and so I don’t blame people who are still trying to keep their heads in the cloud.”
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Rabi Madaki is a writer and Psychology student that's passionate about humanitarianism.

created: September 12, 2022

author: Rabiat Madaki