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‘Orgasm’: The Nigerian indie film exploring the dangers of queer hookup culture - Minority Africa
Samuel Banjoko
June 12, 2022
Image Description: A still from the film orgasm. Two black male presenting individuals who play certain characters from the film are on a bed in distinct sitting positions. One of them looks at the other perplexed as though asking a question. Their hair is rolled to stand singularly and they are wearing a silver necklace.  The other has a silver earring on with a mid length goatee and short cropped hair.
Ogun, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — In 2017, Godwin Harrison found out his lover was getting married a few days before the wedding to a woman despite being gay. His story is familiar to various LGBTQ+ Nigerians.
“I was in love. One day my partner woke up one morning a year into our relationship and told me, ‘I’m getting married,’” Harrison says. “The funniest thing was the marriage was scheduled for Saturday, and we were meeting on a Thursday. He wasn’t bi, but he decided to go into it just to please society and his family.”
Sharing his experience with friends and listening to their own stories inspired Godwin’s new short film Orgasm. In Nigeria where sexual expressions outside what is considered the norm are shamed, criminalised and often met with religious and state-sponsored  pushback culminating in their being forced underground, finding love as a queer person is challenging.
“Society and its discriminatory laws have not made it easy to walk up to someone and say, ‘Oh, I like you.’ We find love in the comfort of online hookups and dating sites,” Harrison says.
The 28-year-old filmmaker, who is based in Abuja, Nigeria, runs Hug Media Concept, which he started three years ago. It is a movie production company dedicated to telling African LGBTQ+ stories.
“I’ve been into filmmaking for my whole life; since 2007. I was in Asaba then. I started as a scriptwriter in 2015 before going into my films. By 2019 I started exploring the LGBTQ+ story,” Harrison says.
Harrison believes that the story of queer people finding love online is overdue. ” I wrote [Orgasm] last year, but I started working on it this year. It is part of my own story as a person and uses a little bit of fiction to tell the world and LGBTQ community that love happens everywhere and can find you anywhere.”
Orgasm tells a story of a one-night  stand between two queer men played by Prince Barnabas and Obue Elvis, who are both looking for various things: love and a final fling before heterosexual marriage.
“Orgasm is about a queer guy trying to find balance,” says 28-year-old Prince Barnabas, who plays the lead role. “It’s a mixture of controversy, love and tragedy. The movie shows two people not deeply in love; it’s about a one-night  stand.”
Orgasm explores a familiar story for many queer Nigerians: hookup culture and navigating safety finding sex, love, and companionship online in an environment where that quest can be fatal.
“The storyline focuses on the problems gay people face when it comes to dating,” Barnabas explains. “It portrays a story of how we can manage it and go about finding love online because most times it’s like the safest place, but to be frank, it’s no longer safe, and a lot of people use it to take advantage.”
He is correct. LGBTQ+ Nigerians using dating apps such as Grindr, Tinder or connecting through social media to find potential hookups have reported being beaten, swindled, blackmailed, and some of these encounters have even resulted in death.
According to The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERS), in 2021 there were 110 reported cases of blackmail due to the victim’s sexual identity. LGBTQ+ Nigerians who fall victim to blackmail can’t get justice due to the 2014 Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, which is often abused by the police to carry out illegal raids and extort perceived homosexuals.
This year, a viral video showed a cross-dresser who was attacked by street thugs days after LGBTQ+ activists protested against a proposed cross-dressing bill by the National Assembly.
Within the community, this experience of going on a date or an arranged hookup and then being conned is referred to as “Kito” and being “kitoed.” It led in part to the birth of a blog that was a response to many instances of gay people being extorted.
“One can never be too careful or careless as regards being kitoed. Based on what I’ve heard from friends, it just happens. So it boils down to the internal homophobic seed that society has planted in the hearts of queer men,” Harrison says.
For Barnabas, working on Orgasm was an opportunity to be in the stories he always wanted to tell as an actor and put the spotlight on how the community normalises sexual assault against queer people.
“I had been sexually harassed once. It just happened, I felt like I took the wrong step. I was supposed to meet with someone but the movement didn’t go the way we planned and I met the wrong person and the guy took advantage of me,” he tells Minority Africa.
“It wasn’t funny but living through the trauma and always thinking about it and trying to dissect that this is not you, and understand these kinds of things just happen.”
Not much is known about the hook-up culture and how it shapes not just queer relationships but also the lives of queer people. Within Orgasm’s 15 minutes runtime, the short film shows what dating is like for Nigerian gay men saddled with the heterosexual expectations of society while also navigating blatant homophobia.
“These stories need to be told, and as an LGBTQ filmmaker, my major driving force is just to tell these stories no matter the circumstances or hindrances,” Harrison says.
The actors also share this driving force.
“I’ve always seen acting as a means of telling stories, mostly hidden stories,” he says and to Orgasm’s unique focus adding, “Aside from me, a lot of person’s face these problems; people taking advantage of them when it is not what they want or what they wish for, and nobody is saying anything about it, it’s just so calm.”
Barnabas continues, “We need to let people know that there are certain things about minorities, a lot of problems we go through that people just assume that since they are not accepted in a particular place or community, they should just accept. I don’t know how people see less of minority people. Playing a role, I feel like I’m standing in for them.”
Although various filmmakers are trying to ensure LGBTQ+ Nigerians are documented and represented on screen, the National Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) often bans films featuring queer characters, citing moral reasons although there are no laws to back their bans.
Last year, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) banned Marvel’s Eternals from cinemas in the country due to a same-sex kissing scene, and in 2020 NFVCB threatened to track down and jail those involved in the making of Ife, a film based on a lesbian couple living in Nigeria. Despite this, Nigerian filmmakers are finding ways to ensure that their films are available to both local and international audiences.
Orgasm was released on April 10, 2022 on GayBinge TV, which holds exclusive rights to the film.
Despite the challenges that come with finding love, Harrison hopes the film would help inspire more queer Nigerians to lead a life that is honest to them.
“There’s an adage I always tell people; when you try to cover a flame, with time it grows into a fire that can consume an entire building. So when you try to hide your sexuality, with time it either turns into internalized homophobia or it ruins your mental health,” he says.
“To stop all of this just live your truth if you know you can, nobody can force you to be what you’re not.”
Edited by Caleb Okereke and Uzoma Ihejirika
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Samuel Banjoko is a Supporting Editor at Minority Africa. He is a Nigerian writer based in Ibadan, Nigeria who enjoys writing about art and culture.

author: Samuel Banjoko


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Peace and reconciliation remain “a pipe dream” for genocide survivors in Zimbabwe - Minority Africa
cyril zenda
August 18, 2023
The unveiling of a new constitution in 2013 brought fresh hopes to different Zimbabweans.
For Duncan Maseko, then 41, the inclusion of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC), a statutory body tasked with searching for truth and ensuring past injustices are remedied, gave him hope. He could finally know the truth about his father, who had been abducted from their home three decades ago.
Maseko was not alone in investing his hopes in the NPRC. The NPRC also appeared to be an answered prayer to tens of thousands of others who had suffered various injustices and were searching for truth and closure. But as the ten-year tenure of the commission draws close, Maseko and the others are thoroughly dejected.
“To me, the NPRC is just a circus,” Maseko, now 51, tells Minority Africa. “My only wish is to have full information on the remains of our loved ones.”
Shortly after Zimbabwe’s independence, friction between ZANU-PF and PF-ZAPU, two former liberation movements, boiled over into armed conflict.
In 1982, then Prime Minister, the late Robert Mugabe, responded by deploying the Fifth Brigade, his special North Korean-trained army unit, to the western parts of the country – strongholds of the opposition PF-ZAPU.
During the five-year (1982-87) campaign of terror that followed, over 20,000 people died, and thousands of others were maimed, raped, or simply went missing. Maseko’s father, Sam, was one of the over 20,000 people unaccounted for.
A former Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) combatant during the armed struggle that resulted in Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, Sam was abducted from his home in Bulawayo, the country’s second-largest city, on February 11, 1984, by state security agents and just like thousands of others, never to be seen again.
Most of those so rounded up ended up at Bhalagwe, a Nazi-style detention camp 100 km south of Bulawayo, where they were gruesomely tortured – many of them to their deaths.
By the time a cold peace was established through a lopsided Unity Accord of December 1987, Gukurahundi, a full-blown genocide, had taken place against the Ndebele tribal minority.
Since the signing of the Unity Accord, efforts by survivors and families of the victims of the Gukurahundi genocide to get closure have been resisted for more than three decades by successive governments of Zimbabwe.
The closest former president, Robert Mugabe, came to acknowledge the Gukurahundi atrocities was describing them as a “moment of madness.” Still, he resisted calls for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, similar to one that was convened in South Africa in the aftermath of Apartheid, to bring closure to the survivors.
Since coming into power in the November 2017 coup, President Emmerson Mnangagwa – who stands accused of masterminding the atrocities as State Security minister, Mugabe’s right-hand man – under pressure from survivors and relatives of victims, held a series of consultative meetings with civic groups and traditional chiefs to find common ground on the issue.
But critics rightly doubted the genuineness of his commitment, as in 2020, his government tried to exhume mass graves in the Midlands and the Matabeleland provinces without getting anyone to account for these killings. This drew the ire of family members and human rights groups that accused the government of trying to prevent a more thorough historical accounting of the genocide.
Organisations like Ibhetshu LikaZulu, which had three memorial plaques erected for Gukurahundi victims at Bhalagwe blown up by suspected security agents, vehemently oppose any government involvement in the healing process.
“Under no circumstances should there be any government-controlled exhumations and reburials of Gukurahundi genocide victims,” the group’s coordinator, Mbuso Fuzwayo, said in a statement.
The pressure group argues that healing and reconciliation cannot start with mass exhumations and reburials, and certainly not if they are conducted by the government, who happen to have been the perpetrators of the genocide, or those it controls.
They insist that exhumations should be done by an independent body and should come after, among other things, an acknowledgement of the genocide and the release of the Chihambakwe and Dumbutshena commissions’ reports.
The two commissions were set up by the government after public outcry during the massacres in the mid-1980s, but successive governments of Zimbabwe have refused to release their findings.
Analysts say when the NPRC was included in the new constitution, although the hopes were misplaced, it was only natural for those affected by Gukurahundi to hope for closure.
The commission was forced into the constitution by the opposition during the country’s four years of inclusive government and turned out to be an unwanted foster child under the ZANU-PF government.
Its birth was so complicated that it took about five years, of which two and a half were spent choosing commissioners, and another two before the act was passed to come into this unwanted existence. It has left the commission with only five out of its original ten years to exist, most of which it has struggled from lack of resources to carry out its duties.
In 2019, Concilia Chinanzvavana, an opposition legislator, successfully applied to the Harare High Court for the extension of the duration of the NPRC to 2028 to recover the five years lost before it was instituted. The Government appealed to the Supreme Court and got the judgement reversed.
The Supreme Court’s decision means the NPRC will be coming to an end on August 21 without having served not only the victims of Gukurahundi but many others that had looked toward the commission to get closure.
Trumpeted as “the realisation of the social and political will and aspiration of Zimbabweans to transition from a conflictual past to a harmonious future,” the NPRC comes to an end without achieving this goal.
Chinanzvavana tells Minority Africa that resistance to the extension of the Commission’s tenure is testimony of the government’s lack of commitment to peace and reconciliation.
“If we may ask what really has been achieved by the NPRC, virtually nothing in so much as bringing closure to victims who include the over 20,000 Gukurahundi victims, those who suffered inter-party brutalities mostly at the hands of the ruling party and their militia, the atrocious land reform, to name a few,” Chinanzvavana says. “There is no goodwill. Peace and reconciliation in Zimbabwe remain a pipe dream, many souls have suffered in silence, and Zimbabwe, as a nation, will continue bleeding.”
Ibhetshu LikaZulu’s Fuzwayo tells Minority Africa the NPRC was destined to fail from the onset because there was no political will to address the issue of the Gukurahundi genocide.
“Gukurahundi will not be resolved by a government that doesn’t want to take full responsibility, there’s no acknowledgement that it happened… who did what, to who, how and when,” he says, adding that the NPRC had been incapacitated to deliver on its mandate so even if its term were to be extended, nothing will change. “Communities have never expected anything from their killers, they are not fools to believe that those who killed them can wake up overnight and say we are now willing to view you as humans… Victims and survivors of the genocide will never get healing nor closure.”
Zenzele Ndebele, the co-founder of the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE), a local think-tank that has done extensive research and documentation of the events of the genocide, told Minority Africa that the creation of the NPRC raised expectations among the communities affected by the genocide, but it failed to live to its billing.
“There seem not to be political will… the expectation of the general public, especially the people of Matabeleland who were affected by the Gukurahundi genocide, was that there was going to be public hearings where they were going to talk to people,” Ndebele says, “ask them what happened, give solutions, probably ask government to actually say their side of the story on why it had happened, but this did not happen.”
Instead, the government handpicked some chiefs and a few individuals to lead the exhumations and reburials without making an effort to get the atrocities accounted for.
“The challenge is that the government does not really want the issue of Gukurahundi to dealt with to finality because the main perpetrator was government. Most of the perpetrators during Gukurahundi are now senior government officers, so they don’t want to talk about it. It’s another project that will fail, and this August NPRC comes to an end, and it’s the end of the story,” Ndebele says.
Journalist Mxolisi Ncube, who comes from the communities affected by the genocide, said those who were sceptical about the commission have since been vindicated.
“I think the NPRC was more of a public relations stunt by the government of the day than a body formed to fulfil any purpose,” Ncube tells Minority Africa.
“Its failures are well-captured in the lackadaisical approach towards addressing not only the Gukurahundi massacres but also the past and present political violence and political murder cases in the country. For as long as anger and grievances over Gukurahundi, undocumented survivors, tribal antagonism, and toxic politics in the country still exist, the NPRC has not done its work and these are still glaring and flaring as we speak.
“It is so sad that those who were sceptical about the existence of political will behind the work of the NPRC have been vindicated at a time when Zimbabweans need to unite more than ever in healing past atrocities, political skirmishes, tribal antagonism and rebuilding the country.”
As local efforts such as the NPRC are proving to be of no help, some of those who have no confidence in a process – in which some of the perpetrators are returning to the crime scene to lead the healing process – are now calling for the international community to investigate the killings. One of the traditional chiefs from the area, Vezi Maduna Mafu, has since approached the United Nations seeking an international commission to investigate the killings.
Edited/Reviewed by Samuel Banjoko, Uzoma Ihejirika, and Caleb Okereke.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.

source: news-minorityafrica

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

author: cyril zenda


text: Pitch Guide - Minority Africa


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“I cannot live uncomfortably for the comfort of oppressors.” LGBTQ+ Ugandans fight back - Minority Africa
Megan Lee
August 10, 2020
For Pride Month in June, two LGBTQ+ Ugandans shared their stories and presence with Minority Africa. Uganda has an international reputation for harboring homophobic views, many of which have foreign origins.
In August 2014, the Anti-Homosexuality Act, first introduced by David Bahati in 2009, was annulled by Uganda’s Constitutional Court due to the technicality of not having enough lawmakers present to vote.  The LGBTQ+ community’s presence in Uganda is proof that oppressed groups can persist, survive, be seen, and even flourish, despite being surrounded by a multitude of opposing forces.
These posts were first published across our social media platforms but have now been condensed into a photo essay.
Kampala, Uganda (Minority Africa) — I first met Raldy Okole when she greeted me outside of her house on the day of our interview. Her vibrant, warm personality makes you feel welcome, accepted, and light. She gave me a tour of the shared house she lives in. She spends a lot of time in the kitchen organizing or “tinkering” with food.
She likes the physicality of working with her hands. She draws and crafts assorted things. Her bedroom is beautifully decorated with the personal artifacts she’s collected over the years. The blue of Lake Victoria sits in view just beyond the window by her bed. She loves gardening because that was an activity she shared with her mother.
We ventured into the green surroundings outside the house. Sitting beside her on a tree swing facing Lake Victoria, I asked my questions and then listened.
I grew up in Jinja, Uganda. For the longest time, I thought I was the only [queer person].
I think when you feel fear and […] a negative attitude coming at you from other people, it’s so easy to cave into yourself and think I must be the only one who’s going through this because everyone seems to be sailing through. And it wasn’t true. One of my closest [queer] friends was just two neighborhoods away from me and I did not know that until we met like a few years ago.
It’s so hard to hide me, from the way I walk to the way I talk. My gestures, everything screams ‘homosexual’ from a mile away. I’ve never felt like I needed to hide myself.
I always figured out the queer things faster than I figured out other things in my life because for the longest time it was like, I’m queer. It was the thing that [became] my life. And outside of that who am I? Who am I outside of that?
[I was] raised by a single mom [and] surrounded by her sisters. Big family, very close, very happy childhood. From the time I could walk, I was born and I jumped and just fell into my mum’s heels.
Every time she went to church on Sundays, I would dress her and say, ‘No that doesn’t go with those shoes, try these shoes. She was like, ‘Oh you’re very creative, you’re very good at makeup, very good with clothes, you’re well-spoken. These are all strengths to have.’
She played on my strengths, defended me, and shut down people when they tried anything.
My mum was my sun, my moon, my stars, my everything. And when [she passed], it spun me out of orbit.
Sometimes when the center of your universe has been ripped out, you have no center anymore. I didn’t have a center in myself.
The police is not a friend to queer people in Uganda. It’s so easy to use queer people as a scapegoat for people’s anger towards the state.
It was around midnight […] We were at the back of the bar when we just saw a surge of people coming and I turned to [my friend], and I said, ‘Run.’
[The police] kept saying very derogatory homophobic transphobic things to us, and insulting us and kicking and slapping and caning.
We need to be strong within our own communities to take care of each other because the systems are not created to take care of us.
There’s only so much oppression you can keep doing. One day it snaps, which is what you’re seeing happening in the States. They are beginning to realize that they can’t hide us from their minds.
There is so much beauty queer people bring to this planet. The superpower that we have is that we do not play by the fucking rules.
We paint with every color that exists. We get to choose who our family is. We get to choose who we love. We get to be ourselves, and when we leave this planet, we rest knowing who we are outside of all of the bullshit that this planet has to throw. And that gives us such a freedom to look beyond the frame that we are supposed to live in. We see beyond that.
Governments are new institutions, we have been here since the dawn of time. We are important. We are beautiful. We are magical, and we must exist. That idea gives me confidence to walk out of my gate, to walk out of my door in the morning.
Florence Kyohangirwe is an embodiment of common sense and indignation in a chaotic, imposing world. She’s a fighter. I’ve gotten to know this through living with her. She is assured in her expression, whether it’s through what she has to say,  how she chooses to dress, or how she takes photographs.
She has an uncanny intuition about human beings and how they move in the world, and empathy that reaches you. Although she learned from a young age that she didn’t have the talent to draw, she’s always been drawn to artistic expression and wanted to carve out her own niche in the art world by writing about creatives. She reads a lot.
Recently, she has joined our team at Minority Africa.
Sitting at the end of her bed, in her familiar room, she began painting the stories of which I’ve heard only snippets before.
My first struggle as a kid was as a one-day-old baby fighting to stay alive. My mom had me and unfortunately, she over-bled and passed on that very day. My aunts and my cousin took me under their wings and the rest of my growing up happened in my cousin’s house.
My childhood is not really a sad story. [Without it], I wouldn’t have been a wannabe globetrotter at a young age but above all, I wouldn’t have a voice.
My aunt is my biggest inspiration. She is very opinionated and hates injustice and that is exactly who I am. Almost all the clothes I wore back then were gender-neutral. No one told me statements like, “Those are boys’ clothes” or ”Those are the appropriate clothes for women.”
She encouraged me to journal at a young age. I started expressing myself through writing.  My rants, praise, and tears would all be in my journals. [Till date], writing is where I feel the most alive.
I cannot [live] uncomfortably for the comfort of oppressors, society, religion, or culture. I refuse.
Queer people should refuse oppression and also look out for each other. When one queer person is oppressed, we are all oppressed.
Straight people have actually mastered the art of oppression. They feel entitled to explanations from queer people about who they choose to love, about how they decide to dress, about roles in queer relationships […] all this, we do not owe them.
The straights I surround myself with know not to ask me anything they wouldn’t ask a straight person.
Being queer and able to express yourself how you want or feel is a privilege many don’t have, especially in Uganda. People fear judgment, backlash, and bullying. But when you decide that the world will get whatever you give her, that’s the most freeing choice.
Dressing and writing are a [way] to experiment and enjoy my queerness.
We have LGBTQ+ people represented and that takes courage. We have queer DJs, openly queer lawyers, events, doctors, TV personalities, and makeup moguls.
I’m proud of fellow journalists who are publishing stories about the LGBT community because other media channels censor LGBTQ+ content as if we don’t exist.
I am proud I can advocate for and write about the LGBTQ+ community without fear.
These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Megan S Lee is a videographer at Minority Africa. She hails from San Dimas, California but is currently based in Kampala, Uganda, where she has been using her skills to illuminate grassroots community development, environmental, and LGBTQ+ issues for non-profit organizations and individuals. She received her B.S. from the University of California, Berkeley in Conservation and Resource Studies. Megan draws her daily dosage of inspiration from music, documentary films, greenery, food, and her mother. She occasionally writes on Medium and Wikipedia. She is driven to fight climate injustice, elevate minority voices, and record memories.

Contact: megan.lee@minorityafrica.org

author: Megan Lee


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Pride to Prejudice: The Nigerian queer community’s complex relationship with social media - Minority Africa
Elvis Kachi
October 4, 2023
When Ms. Fola Francis, an openly trans woman living in Nigeria, joined a trend and posted a video of her transition on TikTok, it was for her to be celebrated by her community for her resilience and acceptance of her identity. The trend was named “the son my parents thought they had vs. the daughter I became.” Unfortunately, the video went viral and into harmful watchdog accounts in Nigeria, and she had to take it down due to transphobia and physical threats.
Francis couldn’t control the virality of the video, and as it entered the screens of homophobic and transphobic Nigerians, she had to flee her home to a different city in Nigeria because the online transphobia began to manifest physically. She reports being continually assaulted by her neighbours when they discovered her identity.
“Times when my videos got picked up by public homophobic accounts, it opened me to transphobia because the vast majority of Nigerians are transphobic,” she tells Minority Africa.
In January 2014, ex-president of Nigeria, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, passed into law, the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, SSMPA, which criminalizes Nigerians who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. In other northern Nigerian states, there’s the practice of the Sharia Law, one of whose provisions is the stoning to death of people who identify as LGBTQ+.
Nine years after the Act, the queer community in Nigeria continues to grow strong by leveraging a tool as powerful as social media.
With Francis, coming into full acceptance of herself and living freely on social media isn’t just about her, but for other queer people who constantly doubt their identities and reasons to exist. For her, this is activism, and social media has helped her reach a multitude of people in conservative countries. “My core of doing this [on social media] is to create a form of representation to affirm that I exist and do this here,” she says, “And to give people hope that they’re not alone.”
Chisom Peter Job is an openly gay Nigerian journalist and story consultant who’s still recovering from the homophobia and attacks he had to experience when a tweet about his coming out to his father went viral. In the now-deleted tweet, he opened up about how his father became a safe space for him to live expressively. Job has a major health challenge, and he admitted that the virality of the tweet and the homophobia that came afterwards caused a relapse in his health.
“I received nasty comments and messages, and it was very triggering for me. I deal with anxiety a lot, and that really triggered it,” he says to Minority Africa.
Beyond this, though, social media has also helped a lot of queer Nigerians find their tribe and build their communities. It has allowed them to settle into their identities, even before making any official comments to those in their lives. “Even though some of us have been unable to be visible with our queerness in real life, social media has given us that platform to find ourselves,” Francis says. “It has been the safest way for us to express ourselves and build our community.”
Social media has also been a way for queer Nigerians to share information and discuss primary issues that affect the community. From the #EndHomophobiaInNigeria to #RepealSSMPA and #QueerLivesMatter, which trended on Twitter (now X) for days, conversations about queer people in Nigeria that would otherwise not see the light of day if those conversations took place physically, have been amplified.
Speaking with Thought Leader, Matthew Blaise, one of the pioneers of these hashtags, said, “The Queer Lives Matter video went viral because of the swiftness of Twitter. It is a powerful platform for organising and amplifying the works of local activists.”
Even with physical meetings involving queer people living in Nigeria, social media has been used as a tool to disburse information about secret locations, times, the reasons for events, speakers, activities, and the likes, since this would help reach more people in distant locations.
“Away from this harassment, social media has been able to create a ground for us to be able to talk about issues affecting us as a community,” says Job. It’s a way to be expressive and a way to connect with like and sane minds.
Most times, virality is unexpected and comes with its price. For most people, it causes psychological trauma; for others, there’s the anxiety of what to post and what not to post. For some, it’s the uncertainty of targeted trauma, because with most social media apps, both followers and non-followers are allowed access to you.
“Creating a community is one thing, but keeping the community safe away from targeted harassment and hate crime is also hard,” Job says. However, he’s found a way to manoeuvre through it. “With the way [most of these apps] are set, targeted harassment is very easy.”
One of the best ways openly queer people in Nigeria have protected themselves from social media harassment and violence is by forming communities where they feel safe to fully express and be themselves.
“When my post went viral, having a community of people both online and offline greatly helped,” Job recalls. He had a lot of online conference calls with friends to ensure that he was safe and prevent anxiety from kicking in. With social media empowering people to be vicious with their comments and DMs, there have been features like the block and mute buttons that have reduced the amount of homophobia and transphobia queer Nigerians have to undergo.
“There’s this thing I tell people around me— ‘Block people on social media’,” Job says.
In an affirming quote, Francis says “putting yourself on a public platform opens you up to a lot of harassment, and for a minimum, I block at least five accounts daily.”
Several other features like reporting an account for posting your content without consent have been developed, and queer Nigerians are using them to their advantage. Most times, the response is slow or ignored. Other times, it works, but this is a welcome improvement.
“Thankfully, a friend sent me a copyright form. [Most of these social media platforms] have this infringement form where if your original content is being uploaded without your consent, they’re authorised to take it down. That’s what I’ve been doing,” Francis says.
Queer Nigerians, however, are seeking these platforms to create tools that enable safety measures, especially for individuals living in conservative countries. For example, certain keywords and slurs should be blocked out from being used.
Francis suggests that there should be a way for these platforms to verify that a user is part of a minority in a particular country or location. She also suggests that for the usage of these platforms in conservative countries like Nigeria, certain functions like screenshots and screen records should be limited, like what the gay app, Grindr is doing.
“They can also take reporting seriously,” Job adds. “Bots shouldn’t be behind these reports, as they can be very serious, and bots can take a while before they respond. Social media has to invest in people who’re willing to check on these reports, flag them, and take them down.”
Edited by Awom Kenneth, Caleb Okereke, Uzoma Ihejirika and Banjoko Samuel.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Elvis Kachi is a UK-based fashion and culture journalist, who’s contributed to publications like BBC, Essence Magazine, Thomson Reuters, etc.

created: October 4, 2023

author: Elvis Kachi


text: Privacy Policy - Minority Africa


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The pressure to conform: How queer Nigerians navigate marriage expectations during the holidays - Minority Africa
Obinna Tony-Francis Ochem
January 25, 2023
At twenty-six, my hometown and family gatherings have become places where I have been subjected to gossip and suspected of being a ritualist. A far cry from what it was for me growing up; a place to meet all my extended family members, smile at my grandmother, and see people who are one.
I was born in Lagos, Nigeria, raised by relatives, and attended a missionary secondary school. I have had to battle the internalised homophobia I learnt from religion and school. But growing up loving Igbo traditions and learning that, unlike culture, religion is unchanging, I became more drawn to my culture as I came to accept my sexuality.
But once you reach a certain age in Nigeria, marriage conversations become recurrent. Since I refused to get married, I have had to avoid my relatives and family gatherings, trying to evade conversations around marriage. These conversations start with relatives giving subtle remarks or asking, “what are you still waiting for?”, “Hopefully, you’ll be inviting us for a naming ceremony soon”, or, “I think I have found a perfect girl for you. I know how you like them.”
It’s an experience that Inno, a 28-year-old gay man, aptly captures, “Returning home for Christmas and being at family gatherings was fun when I was much younger. As an adult, however, it became harrowing for me for two reasons. First, the gatherings became more of an avenue for family members to show off. Then talks about marriage started creeping in, like, “When you are ready to marry, make sure to marry from here or there.”
Questions and remarks like these are uncomfortable for queer Nigerians like me, who already find it difficult to find love and constantly face homophobia.
In Igbo culture and across our societies, without marriage, you are nearly nothing and it is quite easy for your opinions to be discounted. When a man gets married, your opinions are respected, and your social class becomes higher because you traditionally have someone you lord over in the home.
For women, marriage is different, “You do get some regard as a woman, which doesn’t last if you don’t ‘provide’ a child six months after the wedding. If you do provide a child, make sure it’s a son. Either way, you remain a second class citizen,” says Wendy, a 27-year-old pansexual woman.
For Wendy, conversations around marriage have existed since she could count her fingers, and they have only gotten brazen as she grew older. “As a teenager, you are warned to move carefully so you do not bring shame to your home and end up unmarried. They start matchmaking you with random boys or men, so you have an assured husband after SS3.”
Despite this, Wendy is an outlier; her parents already know about and accept her sexuality, even though they still blame the devil. But her parents knowing doesn’t make it any easier because marriage is not an affair for just your parents; it’s an affair that concerns your relatives. That means when you are of age, close and even distant family will quip to find out what is delaying you from bringing a man or woman home.
Like every person that travelled to their hometown over the holidays, Wendy travelled too, but she didn’t escape those scary moments and gossip. “I travelled this December, and they pestered me like they usually do over the phone, but I don’t care,” Wendy says.
Questions around marriage are often not well-intentioned. “It’s for their egos, to be honest, that ‘none of our daughters died in their father’s house.’ They don’t care if you live or die. If you die, better do it in a man’s house,” she adds.
Even when these questions are well-intentioned, they alienate LGBTQ+ folks from our relatives. Holidays and family gatherings, which we’ve always seen as places where we come for relief have morphed into a space we shiver at because we are not welcome to be our true selves.
Though I am not yet at the age where it’s persistent, I have developed some sort of fear whenever a family member wants to speak to me. I assume it might be a conversation about my sexuality and other related things.
I know how to shun friends with their questions about romantic relationships, but with family members, I am overwhelmed with trepidation, and it shows in my reactions, raising more questions.
I have developed anxiety concerning straight men gathering and discussing marriage and heterosexual relationships. During my last trip to the South East, I tried ignoring family meetings. I shunned a gathering of my relatives where they discussed societal issues for a long hour. I know long discussions like that come with personal prodding. They might not necessarily ask me about bringing a wife home, but my fear of gatherings like this exists because they are mostly about traditional and conservative family values.
For LGBTQ+ Nigerians, withdrawing from our families is another way our safe spaces are constantly being eroded. In public, the government stifles LGBTQ+ rights, while at home, we are forced to hide and saddled with marriage expectations by our relatives.
Non-governmental organisations like Oasis, run by Matthew Blaise, a queer activist, are one of the few safe spaces where LGBTQ+ folks like myself can gather to smile and make ourselves happy during the holidays, finding love outside our traditional families, away from what we have learned about blood being thicker than water.
Still, conversations around marriage make me wonder if I will ever fit into this culture I have come to cherish. Especially knowing that no matter how good I have been all my life, being a gay man nullifies everything, and I would constantly be faced with questions about marriage.
Edited by Samuel Banjoko, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Obinna Tony-Francis Ochem is a full-time freelance writer navigating gender, class, sexuality, climate change, and shape-shifting monsters. He is an alumnus of the Lolwe Fiction Workshop facilitated by Zukiswa Wanner and SprinG '20 cohort writing mentorship programme. His works are published on different platforms which can be seen here.

created: January 25, 2023

author: Obinna Tony-Francis Ochem


text:
“Queering the internet”: The importance of transgender online spaces in South Africa - Minority Africa
Cassandra Roxburgh
August 1, 2022
I started transitioning in 2020 during the Covid19 pandemic. At the time, I was living with my parents and had not come out to them as transgender. Social media allowed me to connect with a network of other trans people in South Africa going through similar experiences. Other trans-feminine people provided resources for starting hormone replacement therapy, while trans masculine people shared their old clothing with me. The community I found was crucial to keeping the fragile pieces of my life together. Without them, the journey to discovering my gender and identity would have been plagued with difficulties.
Online spaces have always served as a medium for transgender people to discover more about their identities. Many sites are trans-friendly, and these sites do not frame trans identity as deviant or sensationalised. In South Africa, it was difficult to escape misrepresentations about trans identity. However, the internet provided a vital space for many transgender people like myself to engage with their gender identity.
“Up until roughly 2007, we were using forum-based spaces to connect with other queer people and other trans folk,” says Dr Nyx McLean (they/them), a research associate at Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies. As a result, forums played a significant role in enabling virtual trans communities.
Gender DynamiX (GDX), a public benefit organisation established in 2005 that focuses on the transgender community, used to run online forums catering for the online community. The forums are defunct now, but the research of Professor Jeanne Prinsloo, Professor Emeritus at Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies, provides a snapshot of the interactions. GDX hosted two forums: Girl Talk for transfeminine people and Boy Talk for trans masculine people.
The content of the forums focused on discussing significant milestones trans people achieve in the process of transitioning, such as starting hormones or successfully changing their name or gender marker. In addition, many of the posts dealt with providing mutual aid resources or simply holding space for the trials and tribulations of the trans experience.
While the content of the forums was similar,  there was a notable difference between Girl Talk and Boy Talk. Much of this can be attributed to the expectations of performing specific femininity or masculinity. Boy Talk featured short, curt posts that were largely devoid of complex emotions. Girl Talk, however, had more elaborate discussions and debates while having detailed disclosure of emotions. In addition, Girl Talk featured more conversations about the challenges of transitioning and negotiating the transphobic harassment trans femmes experience in South Africa.
The brief amount of research into the GDX spaces is a time capsule of how trans people used to engage with the internet. The engagement was primarily through a lens of binary trans identity. Girl Talk and Boy Talk featured very little in the way of non-binary inclusion. Noah Lubinsky (they/he), a MA candidate at the University of Witwatersrand who has researched trans identity in South Africa, notes that “a lot of early online spaces were mediated and moderated by medicalisation.” Access to the spaces depended on cis therapists invested in a diagnostic understanding of trans identity. As the spaces developed, mainly due to social media, the medicalisation model began to drop away.
The rise of social media ended the dependence on online forums. Facebook allowed for an integration of communities in the sense that you could have different aspects of your life on the same platform. One of the significant benefits of Facebook over an online messaging board was the ability to curate what appeared on your feed.
However, the biggest attraction of Facebook for members of the trans community was the ability to be invisible. “You could covertly engage with trans communities or content but easily dismiss it when being surveilled by a family member or co-worker,” says Dr McLean. Unlike forums, Facebook proved to be safer in that regard.
The rise of Facebook also disrupted the control that binary trans identity had over online spaces. GenderQueer South Africa, one of the first non-binary Facebook groups in South Africa was founded in 2015. The group was specifically to fill a void concerning online spaces for non-binary people. The group was designed to be a virtual space for non-binary folk to share their experiences in a safe space.
In the age of social media, non-binary spaces are given more freedom to exist as the hegemonic power relations that previously controlled access are less pervasive. As a result, online trans communities can be a liberating experience as they disrupt the pathologisation of trans identity within the broader media environment.
The public aspect of social media also became vitally crucial for creating the trans community. Dr McLean argues that the public can be a performative space;  it serves as an affirmation of the self. Lubinsky, however, raises a counterpoint that social media played an essential role in changing the production of South African trans content.
Before social media, the tabloid press of the time had an obscene fascination with trans identity. Publications like Golden City Post and Drum Magazine regularly published sensationalist and salacious articles about trans people. “Early trans representation[s] were spectacles for viewership,” says Lubinsky, “trans people would be brought onto shows like The Felicia Show [the South African equivalent of The Oprah Winfrey Show] for the spectacle.”
There are now several South African trans content creators making South African trans content and building a community around that content. For instance, Zoey Black (she/her) creates daily vlogs on Youtube, or Gabe Gabriel (they/them), who does their weekly testosterone shot live on Instagram. “There is a value to trans people living their lives authentically and presenting it online,” says Lubinsky. They emphasise how these public performances allow the broader community to see a trans person living a rich, full life. “It has a lot of value in normalising the conversation about trans identity,” they say.
The physical world informs the digital. It is impossible to separate the two as your lived experiences influence your online personas. For instance, take the 2012 Joburg Pride – it was a space dominated by white people. It did not account for hate crimes against queer black people, which is why queer black people asked for space to acknowledge hate crimes. The white organisers were offended by this request. These tensions translate into digital space.
“The domination of queer spaces by white people has a large effect on how online spaces are constituted,” says Dr McLean. However, we also need to consider the structural inequalities within the digital divide relating to access to technology or having the luxury of time to be online. These all influence who is allowed access to specific spaces. The result is that online spaces tend to be constituted of white middle-class people who view inclusivity as a check-box.
Many online trans support spaces are inclusive on paper as they don’t discriminate against who is accessing the groups. However, these groups often lack actual measures for true inclusivity. “There needs to be more work done to approach these online communities from an intersectional perspective and include a diversity of experiences,” says Dr McLean.
Lubinsky highlights how white trans identity can often gatekeep access to online spaces based on adherence to prescriptive gender norms. “When your identity becomes extremely precious to you,” they say, “You’re at this intersection of whiteness where you gatekeep spaces to validate your identity as an oppressed person.” As a result, there is a tendency to highlight your oppression over and above any joy experienced by others.
Virtual spaces are essential sites of trans community building because of the lack of visibility for trans people. The internet is safer for the trans community as offline spaces are frequently hostile to trans people. In 2021, South Africa experienced a spree of transphobic hate crimes in a year in which the global rate for trans hate crimes increased dramatically.
Trans people are left out of the national conversation in South Africa. For example, they are excluded from the national census due to negligence in developing questions to gather data on trans and queer identity, resulting in legislators and policymakers ignoring the needs of trans people. The online sphere, however, is relentlessly obsessed with transgender people. It is impossible to go a week without a South African public figure tweeting disparaging remarks about trans identity or regurgitating the arguments made by TERFs about trans women and bathroom access.
On the other hand, online spaces also allow trans people to create user-generated content to define their narratives. A critical component of this is the designing of counter-narratives to transphobia. For instance, earlier in May, several public figures tweeted critiques of school guidelines to introduce gender-neutral bathrooms to schools where reasonably possible. The opposition fixated on red herrings about sexual predators, while trans Twitter users in South Africa spoke candidly about their negative experiences with bathroom access. The counter-narrative humanised the trans experience while showing the backlash for what it was: the transphobic ramblings of reactionary politicians.
Through the internet, trans people can create communities in which they can joyfully connect with people who care about them. “Social media enables heightened visibility,” says Lubinsky, “The creation of online communities leads to improved communication of trans issues.”
This increased visibility creates a false perception that trans people are overly represented in society. “There is a belief that there is a surge in trans [people] when we now have access to spaces where our voices and our sense of selves can be presented,” says Dr McLean. However, that is not the case, as trans people are no longer relying on media companies like Netflix to tell their stories, especially given how Netflix has placed transphobic content creation front and centre with the latest Ricky Gervais special.
Dr McLean’s research has shown that many people seek out online trans communities in South Africa for rest. “A lot of people go into these spaces as a space of rest and recovery and to reorganise themselves to face the day,” says Dr McLean. Given the state of the world and local politics, people deserve to have an oasis where they can feel safe and can let adherence to gender normativity go.
“These spaces give trans people joy, and they deserve to experience joy. People must stop trying to take that away from them,” says Dr McLean.
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.

created: August 1, 2022

author: Cassandra Roxburgh


text: Rafiki - Minority Africa


text:
Restrictive Regulations Will Not Improve Sexual and Reproductive Health - Minority Africa
Opeyemi Rasak-Oyadiran
September 4, 2022
For as long as I can recall, almost everything I tried to learn about sexual and reproductive health has always been shrouded in mystery and silence or unnecessarily regulated. No one ever gave me a reasonable justification for this.
Many young people navigating their sexuality and sexual health seek answers from authority figures in their homes or schools. But unfortunately, those spaces are usually silent about what they need to know. Or worse, the answers they find are either not comprehensive enough or deliberately misleading.
The less we know about our bodies and sexual and reproductive health, the less informed the choices we might make. This lack of information can result in avoidable complications in our general health and well-being.
Unfortunately, many of the current conversations around sexual and reproductive health concerning women, trans-men, and some non-binary people focus on regulation. These conversations show a pattern of control and the limitation of the choices they can make about themselves.
When Donald Trump made one of his first proposed budget cuts as President of the USA on January 23, 2017, it was an executive order cutting off funding aid from the USA to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These were mainly NGOs that included legal abortion information and services as part of their family planning outreach, even if the funds used for abortion awareness and advocacy were from their own pockets. This decision would later target not just family planning support aids. The USA withdrew funding from all global health aids if they promoted any form of awareness about abortion as a family planning method as part of what became known as the global gag rule.
The gag rule created significant setbacks for the accessibility of funding for groups and organizations that refused to be gagged. For example, the Marie Stopes Centre in Nigeria refused to subscribe to the gag rule, resulting in the organization losing the U.S. Agency for International Development funding. This funding was essential to their services as it allowed them to support many health centers that catered to sexual and reproductive health needs, as well as relevant outreaches. The loss of funding was detrimental to reducing Nigeria’s unwanted pregnancies and mortality rates. The global gag rule and its consequences limited reproductive choices for those most in need of it.
President Joe Biden repealed the global gag rule after he came into office. However, the aftershocks of Trump’s policies, especially in rural and vulnerable locations deprived of health aid and support, are still being felt.
Fast forward to June 24, 2022, and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade’s landmark decision. The repeal has resulted in the American people losing their right to abortion. Unfortunately, for anyone who has paid attention to the tone of conversations surrounding sexual and reproductive health in U.S. history, this is not an isolated event, and its effect going forward will not end at the U.S. border.
For years, the U.S. has been recognized as a pacesetter, with many of its policies having significant influence over legislative decisions, amongst others, in many nations, particularly in developing nations. Therefore, it’s a no-brainer that reversing Roe v Wade will have global health ramifications.
Already, there are sub-conversations on abortion and birth control arising from Roe v Wade’s reversal. At the same time, morning-after pills are still legal in the U.S., with some states restricting how accessible the pills can be. There are suspicions that this could still be revisited by the Supreme Court, especially since Justice Clarence Thomas has suggested that judicial precedents protecting access to contraception be revisited. There are also talks about contraceptives like Plan B pills being a form of abortifacient – a drug that can cause abortion. This notion has been discredited as inaccurate but reflects the current reality of the difficulties of accessing contraceptives now in the U.S. A significant development is the possibility of people being at the risk of criminal prosecution for miscarriage. The reversal of Roe v Wade spells danger for us and the choices we can make.
In Nigeria, the laws regulating abortion are found in the Criminal Code and the Penal Code, which apply to Southern and Northern Nigeria, respectively. The laws are unambiguous. Abortion is a crime in Nigeria, which could result in up to 14 years in prison. Abortion is only allowed when the pregnant person’s life is endangered by carrying the pregnancy to full term.
Despite the above laws, Nigerians are getting abortions. There is no definite data in hand but the little data that can be gleaned from cases of abortion-related complications, mortality rates and morbidity rates recorded annually suggests that these abortions are primarily unsafe. Research by the Guttmacher Institute showed that people (maybe specify whether teenagers or young adults) deemed to be at risk of losing their lives made up 40% of safe abortions carried out in Nigeria in 2015.
The demographic most likely to want an abortion due to unwanted pregnancy is young people, including teenagers and adolescents. A study in 2018 showed that the rate of adolescent pregnancy in Sub-Saharan Africa was estimated at 19.3%, the highest even outside Africa. In many conservative African states, there is little access to proper sex education, free contraceptives or sexual health care for very young, sexually active people, especially in rural areas. None of these changes the truth that teenagers and adolescents in Nigeria are having sex. Most are non-consensual, leaving them vulnerable to multiple STIs, STDs, and unwanted pregnancies.
In several African countries, there is limited access to free contraceptives, especially for the young and unmarried. The shops that sell them perpetuate stigma around the use of contraceptives by shaming the people that purchase them. As long as contraceptive use is described as ‘dirty’ or ‘immoral,’ cases of unsafe abortions will only continue to rise, as well as the consequent complications that will result from it. The restrictive abortion laws in Nigeria are based on archaic morality, which are designed to discourage alleged sexual immorality and irresponsibility. The current reality faced by those who inadvertently have to choose between having children they’d rather not have or risking their lives and health by getting unsafe abortions paints a glaring picture of reproductive injustice.
Being a mother is a decision which has long-lasting consequences. Motherhood – childbirth is not the endpoint. Instead, it is a lifelong commitment with financial, emotional, medical and mental consequences. The stakes are too high for those involved to have a passive say in the decisions they get to make.
Removing the cover of shame and faux morality and safeguarding the sexual and reproductive rights of women, trans-men, and some non-binary people in an ideal society reduce the chances of contracting sexually transmitted diseases and infections. Furthermore, being informed about reproductive health allows people to avoid unwanted pregnancies and access healthcare, ensuring they can carry a pregnancy to full term without avoidable complications.
Studies by UNESCO show that comprehensive knowledge about sexuality empowers young people to make better long-term decisions about their reproductive health and protects them from exploitation.
Contraceptives being available to those who do not yet wish to have children, or don’t intend to have children at all, means fewer unwanted pregnancies, which means fewer abortions. In the U.S., research shows that available and accessible family planning services, including contraceptives, have reduced the frequency of unwanted pregnancies that have to end in abortion. As a result, no one will have to die due to unsafe abortions because they do not want to keep a pregnancy.
But it’s also essential to remember that these benefits are not just restricted to sexual or general health.
In a country like Nigeria, the most populous black nation, poverty keeps rising as the population grows, and family planning is not just a reproductive right, it is a necessity. Giving a choice about family planning to half of the country empowers them to be an active and productive part of the labour force. This allows them to contribute to the economy while also ensuring fewer children who cannot be taken care of are being born. The math is simple, and it balances.
In Nigeria and beyond, restrictive laws or policies regarding sexual and reproductive rights do not have positive results to justify them. There is no data or research to show a decrease in unwanted pregnancies. On the contrary, the population keeps rising, with poorer living conditions. Moreover, there are more unsafe abortions than ever, so maternal mortality rates will continue to grow.
Sexual and reproductive rights are human rights, and women, trans-men, and some non-binary people shouldn’t be seen first as birthing vessels but as people with full agency.
The only laws that should regulate our sexual and reproductive health are those that protect our health and general well-being before anything else.
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.

created: September 4, 2022

author: Opeyemi Rasak-Oyadiran


text:
What does a Ruto presidency mean for LGBTQ+ people in Kenya? - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
January 13, 2023
Harmony Kyomugisha breaks down what the 2022 election of Kenya’s new president means for LGBTQ+ people in the highly Christian country.
Produced and edited by Jamie Intwari. Written and researched by Kevin Wanai.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.

created: January 13, 2023


text:
A Rwandan afrofuturist musical constitutes dreaming as resistance - Minority Africa
Dushime Uwonkunda Sylvie
January 21, 2023
For marginalized communities, imagination is a solid and suitable tool of resistance against systems of oppression. Stacey A. Gibson explained this best when she wrote, “Often, imagining is an act of liberatory adventure, since it feels borderless, boundaryless, and free of the constructs that bind. To imagine is to transcend. The imaginer can time travel, hover, disappear, and multiple selves can be constructed, observed, and nurtured.”
Afrofuturistic work has therefore been one of the avenues in which this has been accomplished. According to Ytasha L. Womack, Afrofuturism is an intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation.
To expand on that definition, Ingrid Lafleur, an Afrofuture strategist, said that she sees Afrofuturism as a way to encourage experimentation, reimagine identities, and activate liberation. The charmingly eccentric film, Neptune Frost, embodies these definitions meticulously.
Set in Rwanda, Neptune Frost is an Afrofuturist musical film that follows coltan mine workers who escape and meet other outcasts to find a community in an abandoned village named Digitaria. They proceed to form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective, in an attempt to overthrow the authoritarian regime that is exploiting the region’s natural resources and its people.
In a conversation that followed the premiering of the movie in Toronto, Saul Williams, who wrote and co-directed this marvel with his spouse Anisia Uzeyman, said they wanted to address global issues creatively. “I wanted to find a way to talk about the stories and realities that were happening around the world without preaching, and fiction was the best avenue to do this,” he said.
After watching the film, I guarantee that Williams and Uzeyman achieved this goal through their artistry and the significant input of the talented cast and crew from Rwanda and Burundi. Williams’ musical and poetic analogies were useful in creating the world of this unorthodox story. Neptune Frost addressed themes like queerness, dreams, capitalism, anti-blackness and resistance while unfolding in an unconventional narrative the same way a poem or a song would.
Williams created the soundtrack Unanimous Goldmine, named after a greeting of the people in Digitaria “ikirombe cya bose,” a slogan that upholds the idea of collective ownership of wealth. The soundtrack accompanies this poetic script and creates an ethereal harmony that aligns ideally with this alternate realm. For instance, in one of the songs, the outcasts sing of the exploitation that happens to them. They sing “Imbunda zanyu n’amasasu nitwe tubyishyura,” meaning “we pay for your guns and bullets.” In line with this, there is a scene where we see miners digging and we hear the narrator, Neptune, speaking of how historically Black bodies has been currency for ages.
Collaborating with prolific Rwandan and Burundian artists, of different fields, is what breathed splendor and freshness into this film. With the help of Rwandan and Burundian musicians and poets like Eric “1Key” Nganga, Kivumbi King, Bertrand “Kaya Free” Ninteretse and Cecile Kayirebwa, Williams and Uzeyman were able to engineer the narrative predominantly in Kinyarwanda and Kirundi.
In an ASCAP screen time episode, Williams said that Rwanda was a star in the movie as well. Indeed, the green landscapes are dazzling. It is uncommon for Rwanda to be seen as the star or the home of stars in the film industry. Neptune Frost invites the audience to see that there are potential extraordinary stories to be told and dreams to be brought to life in this African nation, not just by an outsider but by its people.
The renowned filmmaker, Djibril Diop Mambety asserted that cinema was essentially born in Africa because of the abundance of our oral histories. “Oral tradition is a tradition of images. What is said is stronger than what is written; the word addresses itself to the imagination, not the ear. Imagination creates the image and the image creates cinema, so we are in direct lineage as cinema’s parents,” he explained. On that account, Rwanda would be a great place to continue creating from. In a conversation I had with Manzi Mbaya, a Rwandan dancer who was both a choreographer and an actor in the movie, he affirmed that Rwanda is absolutely brimming with talent. ”What needs to be done is more collaboration and investment in ideas,” said. I agree with him.
Speaking of talent, the world of Neptune mainly owes its allure to the visionary Cedric Mizero, a Rwandan artist, who was the production designer, art director, and costume designer of this movie. With Uzeyman, who was also the director of photography,  they created the hypnotic aesthetics that further enhanced the visual glamour of the film.
Uzeyman said that their visual aesthetic was inspired by learning about the existence of e-waste villages where technologies that are not used anymore go to die. Uzeyman mentions that these villages are in proximity to coltan mines. As we experience, Mizero understood the vision and then incorporated these two existing places in building the set with such brilliant precision and creativity. Using literal electronic waste, Mizero intricately designed the remarkable costumes and setting for the characters.
I discussed the creation process with Mizero and he emphasized that the making of this film was grounded in freedom. “The directors urged the whole team to take ownership of this story. In that spirit, even though I had an extensively researched mood board, I chose to leave so much room for improvisation while on set,” he explained. “I didn’t want to work in an academic type of way. It was more free. In the end, I decided to make it very easy.”
Mizero further elaborated on his design process. “I wanted the feeling of the costumes to be that the people of Digitaria made their own costumes.”  His response reminded me of what Mambety said, “A costume is not an ornament, it is the reflection of a situation.” In light of this, the agency and resistance of the characters in this story is therefore not only perceived in how they act and what they say, but it is also embroidered in their styles.
I asked Mizero what this film meant to him and he said, “It is a voice; it’s our voice, the artists who took part in it. It is also a platform for whoever faces the same issues to raise their voice.”
As a poet, each scene in Neptune Frost simulates a stanza. Each scene moved me differently, similar to what happens when I read or write poetry. When Neptune wore heels, I was moved by the queer representation that was unfolding on my screen. I sang along with coltan miners when they sang about their bodies as currency. The dialogues seemed like metaphors for discourses about the injustices that are happening currently. The sight and sound of Burundian drums at the end lingers on my mind just like the questions that Neptune ponders upon at the beginning do. Evidently, every aspect of this film is rich.
When I asked Elvis Ngabo, who played Neptune, one thing that should stay with the audience, they said, “it is that no one should be abandoned. There should be a place for everyone.” In Digitaria, the perspectives and dreams of the othered are welcome, and we recognize the resistance that is born when they commune. Certainly, the most recurring theme of Neptune Frost is the power of community even in the way that it was made; artists of different niches came together to bring this complex film to life.
Edited by Caleb Okereke and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Dushime Uwonkunda Sylvie was born and raised in Rwanda. They are currently a sophomore majoring in Communication and minoring in Africana Studies at Northwestern University, Qatar. Their politics are informed by Black feminist theory; and they hope as a collective that we rally for the liberation of all oppressed people. They are passionate about poetry and other forms of storytelling, how it brings about change, and the catharsis it offers to the reader and the writer. I want to continue achieving the same goals in my own academic and creative storytelling.

created: January 21, 2023

author: Dushime Uwonkunda Sylvie


text:
Saying: ‘I don’t care that you are queer,’ to a queer person is not allyship. Here’s why - Minority Africa
Billy Hani
August 21, 2020
When I came out to my friend she told me, “I don’t care that you are queer. You are my friend and I will always love you.” At first, I was elated by the show of support, thankful that her love was present nonetheless, especially because I knew that many queer people lose friends and even family when they come out.
But in subsequent times, I have begun to think long and hard about this statement and I have become conscious of how though well-intentioned, it can be unsupportive.
Much of my thought process was inspired by how frequently I started to hear it being used among friends and allies and the unintended nuance that is communicated.
When you say that you do not care that I am queer and you love me regardless, the statement implies that although my queerness is not something lovable, you love me anyway.
It goes further to cast the ally as doing a great job of acceptance whereas neglecting the role and effort LGBTQ+ persons play in summoning the courage to come out. In that instance re-calibrating the situation and making acceptance seem like a favor when it shouldn’t be.
While the context in which friends and allies make this statement is not lost to me, and while I know that it is said to assure and support us, we must reckon with the fact that good intentions do not exonerate a person of the ability to cause harm.
One of the many reasons why this statement is problematic is this: loving me without regard for my sexuality attempts to distance me from my queerness, to see me outside of it, again feeding the notion that queerness is something to be avoided at all costs.
I am composed of many parts, including my sexual and gender identity, all parts are as relevant as the other and it is impossible to love me without acknowledging them.
What is a love that is open to not caring about the very part of me that makes me vulnerable to violence and discrimination?
When you say that you do not care that I am gay or trans and that you love me anyway, it is erasure and this is dangerous because this sort of erasure culminates in creating a non-issue wall around my gender and sexual identity.
And when something is a non-issue it means that whatever problems or challenges affecting the matter will not be addressed. Correspondingly, if my queerness is a non-issue, you will be blind to the struggle and oppression I face as a queer person.
The harm this avoidance does to us filters into the availability of social amenities. In Kenya where I am from, research shows that widespread homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and targeted sexual and gender-based violence continue to hamper access to HIV services among gay men, men who have sex with men, female and male sex workers, and transgender people.
It is important for allies to recognize and accept us, to not jettison our sexual and gender identity from conversations. This recognition is crucial both to our mental wellbeing and to our demand for access to non-discriminative services, whether in healthcare, employment, or elsewhere.
It is crucial in asking for legal reforms for LGBTQ+ persons, signing petitions, keeping our jobs, and living a standard life. Unless our sexuality is seen as a part of us in the same way heterosexuality is, then progress will always be stunted.
Loving me regardless of my being gay or trans is as harmful as not loving me at all. It is why I am asked to ‘tone down my sexuality,’ as though it is something I can be removed from, as though there exists a switch for it. It is why I am expected to shrink myself, to hide parts of my queerness in certain spaces so as to fit in. No more.
Dear ally, I need you to see me as all my parts, as whole, as complete, I and my queerness.
This post is published under our Voices category and as part of our Language series. It is solely the opinion of the writer and does not reflect Minority Africa’s editorial stance. Read more from this series here and contact the editors with ideas or thoughts on language@minorityafrica.org.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Billy Hani is a multidisciplinary queer artist and activist in Kenya. They use writing and Photography to explore African Queerness, Sexuality, Gender Identity and Expression, Bodies, and Death. Some of their work has been published in the Kalahari Review, Praxis Magazine, and Nairobi Cool.

author: Billy Hani


text:
“Sex only for voters”: Queer Nigerians are campaigning for their choice presidential candidate on dating apps - Minority Africa
Ernest Ifeanyi Nweke
November 10, 2022
Abuja, Nigeria — (Minority Africa) When I first spoke to Richard on Grindr in July, his bio had displayed his political view for months. It was simple: sex is available only for registered voters. If you want to hook up, you must show proof that you are eligible to vote.
“I put it up on the day Peter Obi declared he would be running for presidency under the Labour Party,” he says. “I updated it because the number of active and reactive interactions on Grindr is way higher than that of conventional social media platforms. The urgency people come to Grindr with makes it easier to stop them in their tracks and have just about any discussion with them.”
Nigeria has appeared third in the list of highest users of Grindr in the world yet homophobia is ubiquitous. In 2014, then president Goodluck Jonathan passed a bill into law criminalizing same sex marriage in the country with up to 14 years in prison.
Online and offline; Nigeria is currently brimming with political discourse centered on the general elections in February 2023. On Twitter, a presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and the name of his political party have dominated the discussion for months. Obi has been at the forefront of a social media rave that has inspired many young first-time voters to register to vote and also campaign.
A former governor of Anambra State, the Labour Party presidential candidate, sits at the centre as the people’s favorite, with followership determined to upturn the Nigerian duo-political party system that has recycled the same politicians for decades.
Richard was in Abuja when we interacted. He had been to two other states with that bio on his Grindr profile. It made people laugh, and it made them talk about politics, he says. By the time he took a break from Grindr four months later, he had discussed politics and Peter Obi with over two hundred people.
“I decided to do something to help Obi gain more popularity because I agree with his plans to improve the education and tech sector here in Nigeria,” he says. “I also did it because I think we are our problem – as much as our government is – and as such, can do a great deal in fixing this problem by just voting the right candidate into office.”
After watching the value of the Naira fall and the steady rise of insecurity, unemployment, and inflation, Nigerian youths — forced out of school, without jobs, and massacred by the current regime of President Muhammadu Buhari — have seen a glint of hope in Peter Obi. When Obi was governor, he made many unprecedented achievements across sectors in his state and has since captured the hearts of Nigerians by discussing the country’s principal problems today. He has also laid out how he plans to solve these problems, a choice that has set him apart from the other candidates.
In the months since he made his intention to run for office known, Obi, once mocked as Twitter President because of his popularity on Twitter, has grown to have popularity offline as well. His supporters embarked on a named “one million march” earlier in October. However, his followership has not only crossed the borders of Twitter into the streets but also traversed into the ‘dark alleys’ of gay dating and hookup apps in the country.
Igwe Charles lives in Lagos and uses Tinder as his primary hookup app. He has a picture of Obi among his own images on display on his profile. Charles, who should be rounding off his studies in the university but is still in his penultimate year because of university strikes, speaks of encountering similar accounts with pictures and fliers of Obi and the Labour Party.
“I saw other accounts like mine with pictures of Peter Obi. And the rest generally start with some small talk about politics and supporting Obi in the chats,” he says.
On what inspired the decision to upload a picture of Peter Obi on his profile, Charles says, “Having photos of Obi alongside my own on my Tinder profile stems largely from how dearly I need him to win this election.”
“Recently, I started chatting with a man who is also an ardent Obi campaigner. He has pictures of Obi on his profile. He sends me so many updates on everything Obi, his travels, speeches, interviews, videos, everything. The hope that Obi wins was one of the things we had in common.”
Nnadi Chukwukalidibia is another person who was not in school because of the strike at the time of our conversation in September. If universities were open, Chukwukalidibia would have defended his thesis for a postgraduate degree in clinical linguistics and be charting his next course in life.
Instead, he worked as a manager in a fast-food outlet in Delta State until the recent call-off of the strike. “As a queer person, I cannot thrive where things do not work. And I know our problems as a country or the LGBTQ community will not be easy to fix. But if there is anyone to steer us in that direction, it is Peter Obi.”
Chukwukalidibia’s Grindr profile picture is a mannequin draped in an agbada. The white swooning garment had the Labour Party logo embroidered like a crest on a breastplate. He wanted to raise pressing political conversation in the minds of the people with whom he interacted. “I know we are in these spaces for sex, but that does not have to be the beginning and end of what we discuss,” he says. “It always felt like many gay men do not even know that beyond sex, there is more to being a part of society. I put up that picture hoping that it would raise that awareness.”
But are the LGBTQ Nigerians campaigning for Peter Obi on dating and hookup apps doing so because there is a promise that an Obi presidency will repeal Nigeria’s anti-gay law? Not exactly. But they voice certain hope.
“If there will ever be a chance for people to appeal the SSMPA, Peter Obi is the best candidate who would listen,” Charles states. He adds that queer Nigerians like himself trust that Obi, besides being a capable leader, is also a leader who listens.
A 2014 homophobic video of Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, Obi’s running mate, trending after becoming the Labor Party vice-presidential candidate, has done little to dissuade these voters. As Obi said when asked about his position, Chukwukalidibia observes, “Every human being is prone to change. I do not want to judge him by his words from almost a decade ago but by who he can be with Peter Obi.”
LGBTQ Nigerians like Chukwukalidibia appear to have found a way around this difficult position and chosen a side. Since totally ridding the parties of homophobia is impossible, some say they are going with the most qualified candidate who sees people as people.
To draw out more on the meaning of this development for an institutionally homophobic country like Nigeria, I spoke to two Nigerian LGBTQ rights activists, Mathew Blaise and Chimee Adioha. One is at the fore of gay rights activism in Nigeria, and the other works globally and in Nigeria to promote inclusion and engagement. Their positions are not very different from those of the sources I have spoken to so far.
Mathew Blaise, who identifies as nonbinary and is an activist perceives this as a welcome development. Blaise came to the limelight during the #EndSARS peaceful protest. On and off protest grounds, they spoke up about how the Nigerian police specifically target and brutalise LGBTQ Nigerians.
“It is important that we talk about these issues,” they say. “The outcome of these discussions can affect how we are treated in society someday. It ensures our fundamental rights as humans and members of a community.”
However, Blaise is not carried away by this phenomenon. In their view, the reality of LGBTQ Nigerians is more nuanced, and institutional homophobia in Nigeria goes deep. The solution, according to them, is not simplistic and will not spring forth only because some queer Nigerians campaign for a presidential candidate in untraditional spaces.
“Through banter, politicians and the Nigerian public politicise [the] lives of LGBTQ Nigerians for popular votes, and afterward throw them under the bus,” they say. “And this relationship is why [the] history of LGBTQ legislation in Nigeria is a total disappointment. Yes, it is important that queer Nigerians participate in these conversations. But those who do must do so with gentleness and not fault people who – due to their own experiences – choose not to partake.”
Chimee Adioha, a member of the Inclusion and Engagement committee at the Commonwealth Youth Council and the founder of Masculinity9ja, explains why it is essential that LGBTQ Nigerians have political discussions about democracy and the political process in non-traditional spaces.
“We can only change something that we know. I believe political noise and action that occur even in hookup apps and nightclubs that centre gay people should transition from hookup convos to a physical transformation.”
For him, even though the purpose of the legal restrictions put on queer expressions aims to silence the LGBTQ population, Adioha believes the youth can refuse this.
“I also like to see this from a point that queer Nigerians are Nigerians too. It is even more than our queerness,” Adioha says. “To engage and to connect with the state is the most crucial box to check. We may be queer, but let us enjoy good roads and steady electricity.”
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Ernest Ifeanyi Nweke lives in Abuja, Nigeria. He writes about his people, their histories, their cultures, and the things that affect them.

created: November 10, 2022

author: Ernest Ifeanyi Nweke


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“Over straight allies”: Sexual Minorities in Nigeria turn to peer-to peer education to access medical care - Minority Africa
Jeffrey Ehijie
June 20, 2023
In 2017, Kolade*, a bisexual man living in Lagos, experienced discrimination in Nigeria’s healthcare system when he needed a doctor’s consultation for what he perceived to be an anal tear. At first, Kolade sought help from a friend, who was a medical student, but the friend started to ask invasive questions about Kolade’s sexuality.
“I was not comfortable answering his questions because he was straight, so I lied and told him I had very bad constipation instead,” Kolade explains.
Through a WhatsApp group, he was able to find a seemingly open-minded doctor who worked in a state government hospital to whom he spoke freely about his situation.
However, the doctor quickly told Kolade that his condition was not normal and insisted he paid more money for the consultation.
“The doctor charged me 10000 naira (around $14.71) for the consultation when the normal fee for [a] consultation then was 2000 naira (around $2.94) or less, I didn’t mind, I was even willing to pay,” Kolade says.
For his condition, the doctor prescribed Daflon. He however insisted on purchasing the drugs even after Kolade suggested buying the drugs himself.  Kolade gave the doctor 15000 naira ($22.06) for Daflon, which in actuality cost 6000 naira ($8.82) in most pharmacies.
When there were no changes to his situation, the doctor suggested a minor surgery to a dismayed Kolade, and after he refused the idea of surgery, the doctor dropped a shocker on Kolade.
“[He] said I should stop having anal sex and I should re-evaluate my lifestyle. I said fuck it and deleted his number,” Kolade says. “It was a friend of mine who revealed to me the doctor was a scam, and he even helped me get the drugs.”
Access to quality health care is supposed to be a fundamental human right, as cited in sections 17(1) & (3) of the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria as amended and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). This means everyone should be entitled to quality health care services, which include having access to sexual health services free from discrimination and violence.
According to Kolade, this hasn’t been the case in Nigeria, especially for LGBTQ+ people who barely visit public health centers to avoid the discrimination that comes with subpar service or in some cases extortion.
“Minorities will rather self-medicate or reach out to their medical friends than visit a public clinic to treat their sexual health,” he says.
Three years prior, the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2013, SSMPA, was passed into law by former president Goodluck Jonathan. Because of this, Kolade couldn’t risk visiting a health center because he feared being jailed, making him vulnerable to extortionists.
Providing equitable access to health care for every Nigerian citizen is central in the country’s National Health Act but the SSMPA has limited the care to only heterosexuals, further driving many LGBT+ members away from public or private hospitals in the country.
However, the tide is changing thanks to non-government organizations like the Community Population Health Initiative (CPHI), which provides primary health care to sexual minorities.
The Community Population for Health Initiative started operations in Nigeria under the international NGO Population Council and they aimed to conduct HIV research to fight against HIV among sexual minorities. In 2020, CPHI transitioned to become an independent clinic that offers sexual health and mental health consultations to sexual minorities at no cost. The clinic prides itself as a safe space for LGBT+ members to voice out their health situations without fear of the consequences attached to their sexuality in the current Nigerian climate. CPHI’s duty is to treat, educate and counsel people who identify as sexual minorities.
Philip*, a 26-year-old software engineer living in Lagos, enjoys watching good TV shows in his free time. It was binge-watching the TV series Pose that led him to get tested for HIV for the first time.
“I visited a public health center to get tested for HIV and all they did was draw my blood and [give] me my result, which was negative by the way,” says Philip.
At that time he was relieved with the result. But when he felt the need for a second test, he chose to visit CPHI after a friend introduced the clinic to him. He admitted to having a better testing experience at CPHI compared to his first experience.
“[At CPHI], I got a small lecture about the virus [and] they also shared safety measures and immediately registered me for PrEP,” Phillip says. “That day I felt like I got a well-rounded HIV testing experience and that satisfied and aided me in making future decisions surrounding my sexual health.”
Even in the face of criminalization, CPHI has chosen to stay defiant and managed to find ways to stay safe while making themselves accessible to sexual minorities. With a license from the government, CPHI can safely care for sexual minorities without being prosecuted by the authorities.
“CPHI operates with a registered license under the corporate affairs commission, the Federal Ministry of Health, and the Lagos state ministry of Health,” says Elizabeth Eshoyemi, the executive director of CPHI.
“But locating sexual minorities in the city and getting them to visit the clinic for testing was difficult, as most of them are too afraid to trust the safety of the clinic.”
In 2015, They began what they call “community outreach” to locate sexual minorities in the area. They were known as population council by this time. They visited private queer hot spots to create awareness and carry out community testing on anyone in need of testing.
In 2017, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) invaded a private gathering at Ikorodu, Lagos and arrested 40 men on account of engaging in same-sex activities; the NPF arrested 57 men on the same account at Egbeda, Lagos and charged them to court. After those arrests, CPHI had to temporarily stop the outreach for the safety of their staff mostly since the first incident landed one of them in jail.
After they stopped the outreach, they came up with safer ways to reach out to sexual minorities in the city. They train sexual minorities to become peer educators, who are then sent out to the field to educate members of their community. Then they also introduced the Interpersonal Communication method (IPC) also known as peer-to-peer education.
“[Through] IPC, we give queer men and women coupons to encourage them to bring their friends to the facility. For example, someone like me that is easily accessible can invite people to come for tests, even in my home,” Richard Felix, a project coordinator for CPHI, commented.
The IPC approach has proven to be effective over the years, mostly because they use queer men and women to initiate conversations with sexual minorities, as they find it easy to trust members of the community over straight allies.
Often, Felix carries out rapid blood tests for HIV/AIDS which involves using a pin to prick the finger for blood to test for Antibodies/Antigens in the body. The test usually takes between 20-30 mins to get a result.
“Some days I can carry out about eight to ten tests in my home, and we have about over 30 persons engaging the community, which has increased our reach to other states in Nigeria over the years,” Felix says.
Both clients who don’t get the chance to visit the facility or still feel uncomfortable with visiting the facility also get the opportunity to get tested in the privacy of their homes.
“But at the end of the day, everyone still needs facility testing since the home test can sometimes be inconclusive. Facility testing is the best way to get an accurate result,” he adds.
During the Covid-19 lockdown, CPHI initiated a home delivery service. Sexual minorities were able to get their medications delivered to their preferred location. “The home delivery service has also helped us to reach clients that reside outside the city, ” says Esther Uche, a Community Mobilization Officer at CPHI.
Although they work very hard to help create a healthy community, there is no denying that the clinic still faces shortcomings in providing quality health care. The clinic is equipped only for minor, superficial issues, while situations requiring surgeries and other advanced treatments are referred mostly to public hospitals.
“Our government is barely funding anything relating to HIV across the country. All funds come from UNAIDS and Global Fund. It is so sad because [the] government allocates funds for the treatment of this virus, but it has never been used for its intended cause,” Felix laments.
A study has shown that over 81% of funding for HIV comes from international donors, and the government allocates most of the funds to the care of mothers and children living with HIV.
Beyond lack of funding, some clients have also complained about the attitude and the lack of sensitivity of some of the staff in CPHI.
Robyn, a 24-year-old transgender woman, didn’t have a satisfying experience during one of her visits to the clinic. She started visiting CPHI to start the process of her transition and during one of her visits, while waiting at the reception with her friend, a staff member commented a slur about Robyn’s femininity. The employment policy at face value is not necessarily a problem as heterosexual staff claim to be allies, but these experiences underscore the reality that cishet allies can often be insensitive to the experiences of transgender people. As a policy, every staff member must undergo sexual orientation and gender identity expression training (SOGIET).
“When we get complaints through our channels, we investigate and take measures ranging from warnings to suspension and dismissal,” says Eshoyemi.
“I continued to visit the clinic because my friend still worked [there]. After he left, I asked to be transferred to a different NGO that offered almost similar services,” Robyn remarks.
Nonetheless, the quality of care towards sexual minorities has continued to improve, and although still slow-paced, the progress made can’t be ignored. Due to the services from NGOs like  CPHI,  The Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERS), Heartland Alliance International (HAI), and others existing in the country, sexual minorities still have a chance to live healthy lives.
“We run as a one-stop shop, we provide as many services as we can for sexual minorities to live healthily and earn a living. Sexual minorities are welcome to provide their ideas to help us improve our services,” Eshoyemi tells Minority Africa.
His experience with the healthcare system drove Kolade to become a registered nurse in Nigeria. Today, he works on the frontlines, which grants him access to medical facilities but also he is able to help other sexual minorities get the much needed medical care.
“I really do hope the government can decriminalize all sexuality because I feel that is what keeps most hospitals from actually saving lives in this country” Kolade concludes.
*Names have been changed to protect identities.
Edited or Reviewed by Cassandra Roxburgh, Caleb Okereke, PK Cross, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Jeffrey Ehijie, A creative writer living in the city of Lagos. His short story “My Testimony” was shortlisted for “Marked” an anthology of short stories about Queer people living with Hiv/Aids. Earlier works has appeared on Tales and Twist anthology and Love Matters. He believes in the power storytelling has to change the human condition.

author: Jeffrey Ehijie


text: Shop - Minority Africa