When Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, in one of his final acts before being dismissed by President Faye, defended his government’s crackdown on LGBTQ individuals as a rejection of “homosexual tyranny,” he was articulating a sentiment that has been gaining ground across West Africa for the better part of a decade. Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Burkina Faso, and a string of smaller states have all in recent years either passed new laws targeting LGBTQ people or intensified enforcement of existing ones. The rhetoric is consistent: homosexuality is un-African, a colonial imposition, and a threat to traditional values and family structures.
The irony, however, is that the anti-LGBTQ legislation making these countries’ laws among the harshest in the world was itself partly shaped by the very colonial powers now being denounced for exporting “homosexual tyranny.” British and French colonial codes explicitly criminalised same-sex conduct, and those statutes were retained, often word for word, after independence. What is being called African tradition is, in a significant number of cases, British and French law preserved verbatim.
The New Crackdown
Senegal’s most recent round of arrests — targeting at least 14 individuals on charges of “moral disorder” and “incitement to debauchery” — comes amid a broader political contest in which LGBTQ rights have become a convenient cultural lightning rod. Politicians facing economic criticism have found it useful to change the subject to sexual morality, a tactic that works as reliably in Dakar as it does in Kampala or Lagos.
In Nigeria, the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act continues to send people to prison for up to 14 years for simply being in a same-sex relationship. In Ghana, a bill that would criminalise “advocacy” for LGBTQ rights — effectively making it illegal to talk about homosexuality in public — has been working its way through parliament for two years, creating a grey zone that has already led to the arrest of three HIV outreach workers.
The Western Hypocrisy Problem
The standard Western response to these crackdowns is to issue statements, suspend aid programmes, and impose targeted sanctions on officials responsible for human rights violations. The European Union and United States have both taken steps in this direction. But these measures have, paradoxically, reinforced the anti-colonial narrative that the crackdown politicians are deploying.
When a US secretary of state warns Ghana against passing its “advocacy” bill and the Ghanaian parliament pushes it through anyway, the bill’s sponsors can point to the warning as evidence that foreign powers are trying to impose their values on Ghana. “We are being told what to do in our own country,” the bill’s lead sponsor told parliament during the second reading, to applause from colleagues. “This is exactly what colonial masters used to do.”
This framing has been devastatingly effective. Polling across West Africa consistently shows that large majorities view homosexuality negatively, and that attitudes toward Western governments are closely tied to how those governments are perceived to be pressing on cultural issues. The more forcefully Western governments criticise LGBTQ crackdowns, the more popular crackdowns become. It is a perfect policy trap.
A Different Approach?
Some advocates for LGBTQ Africans argue that the solution is less publicly confrontational engagement and more quiet, long-term investment in African-led advocacy. The organisations doing the most effective work on the ground — those running health services, providing legal aid, supporting families — are explicitly not Western-funded and actively avoid positioning themselves as culture warriors.
“The people who are actually changing hearts and minds in Senegal or Ghana are not people who fly in from Washington or Brussels to give interviews,” says activist and researcher Amadou Diallo. “They are local organisations working with religious leaders, traditional authorities, and community elders over years.”
The Bigger Picture
What is happening across West Africa is not ultimately about homosexuality, or even about the contested meaning of African tradition. It is about the failure of post-independence governance — the inability of elected governments to deliver jobs, services, and dignity to their citizens — and the use of minority groups as distractors from that failure.
When Sonko defended his government’s record on LGBTQ enforcement as evidence of national sovereignty, he was doing what demagogues do best: finding a target for diffuse resentment and presenting it as a defence of authentic national identity. It was, in retrospect, one of his last political acts before his dismissal from office.