In the late hours of April 27, 2026, popular X account Pop Base posted about Botswana officially removing colonial-era laws criminalising same-sex relations from the country’s penal code. The post further added that Botswana’s High Court had first ruled the laws unconstitutional in 2019, and that the Court of Appeal upheld the decision in 2021.
As expected, it generated a lot of reactions, with over a million views in less than fifteen hours. Around the same time, Instagram pages like LGBTQ Nation, amplifyafrica, and afrika.world also posted variations of this news, leading to an outpouring of comments and celebrations from Botswana citizens at home and in the diaspora, as well as individuals from other African countries, and around the world.
To understand why this has generated such reactions, one must first consider how the decriminalisation occurred. The advent of colonialism in Africa enforced legal consequences for individuals who exhibited such orientations. Botswana, colonised by Great Britain in 1885 and a protectorate (Bechuanaland) until it attained independence in 1966, adopted British laws that repressed and largely redefined how people could have sex and form relationships. Sections 164(a), 164 (c) and 167 of the country’s Penal Code, adopted from the British, criminalised same-sex relations between adults. Offenders faced up to 7 years in prison.
After years of resistance, citizens challenged the penal code in court in 2018, when a gay man, identified as ‘LM’, argued that those three sections violated his rights: to liberty, to not be subjected to inhumane or degrading treatment, and to equal protection of the law and freedom from discrimination. Before that, there were minor victories, including: one in 2014 which granted the country’s leading LGBTQ+ rights group, Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) permission to register as an NGO; the capital city Gaborone’s City Council approving a motion to repeal the laws in 2016; and the Botswana High Court ordering the state to legally recognise the gender identity of two transgender persons, activist Tshepo Ricki Kgositau and a transgender man represented by the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa, in 2017.
After a series of adjournments, the Botswana High Court eventually deliberated the case, and on July 11, 2019, determined that the three sections and section 165 of the country’s Penal Code violated the constitutional rights of LGBTQ+ persons and declared all but section 167 unconstitutional. The resulting celebrations signified Botswana joining countries like South Africa, Cape Verde, Seychelles, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Mozambique with LGBTQ+-friendly laws.
Implementation barely took place before the state appealed, claiming, according to a November 29, 2021, Reuters report that “there was no evidence that people’s attitude towards homosexuality had changed.”. The appeal was rejected for violating their human rights, with the Court of Appeal Judge President Ian Kirby emphasising the outdated nature of those sections.
As such, the 27th of April, 2026 announcement, was an amendment to the Penal Code, removing paragraphs (a) and (c) of the Penal Code, about ‘unnatural offences’ and leaving only provisions relating to bestiality. All that remains for LGBTQ+ citizens is the right to civil marriages, which the country’s Marriage Act doesn’t yet recognise. Earlier in March, two women, Bonolo Selelo and Tsholofelo Kumile, began proceedings challenging this, facing opposition from religious and traditional groups but supported by LEGABIBO and other advocacy groups. If successful, Botswana will be the only other African country after South Africa to permit same sex unions.
Celebrating this landmark decision is as much a breath of fresh air as it is a reminder of the deplorable conditions LGBTQ+ persons face in other African countries. There’s been a noticeable rise in the number of antagonistic laws across Africa in 2026. On March 11, 2026, Senegal’s parliament passed legislation to double the maximum penalty for same-sex relations to 10 years, as enshrined in Article 319 of the Penal Code. The legislation also now threatens ‘promotion of homosexuality’ i.e., providing public representation or financial support to aligned groups or individuals with a maximum prison term of seven years.
The legislation is the brainchild of Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko. The law followed an episode between February 4 and 9, 2026, when authorities arrested 12 men, including TV Presenter Pape Cheikh Diallo. The Guardian UK, drawing on findings by HIV Justice Network, later reported that as of April 7, officials had detained more than 60, 42 of them linked to the presenter’s arrest. The report also showed the prevailing atmosphere of fear concerning pro-LGBTQ+ discourse in the country.
A month before Senegal’s parliament passed the new legislation, two women were detained by Ugandan police on February 18, on allegations of kissing in public. Community members had reported the pair to the authorities for engaging in “queer and unusual acts”. Uganda’s 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act is one of the harshest in the world, with a 10-year penalty for attempted same-sex acts, a maximum sentence of 20 years for ‘the promotion of homosexuality’ and the inclusion of the death penalty in cases of “aggravated homosexuality”, i.e., repeated same sex acts with a person younger than 18, older than 75, or with a disability.
Advocates and legal teams did attempt to appeal for lesser sentences or the erasure of the Act altogether. However, the Uganda Constitutional Court dismissed the appeal on April 3, 2024. Since then, multiple advocacy groups have continued to condemn the Act and its continued harm to queer Ugandans’ liberty.
In Ghana, lawmakers reintroduced the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill on February 17, continuing a process that began in 2021 and expired in 2024 when it was first passed. The Bill builds on Section 104(1) (b) of Ghana’s 1960 Criminal Offences Act, which prohibits ‘unnatural carnal knowledge’ of a person 16 years or older, including same-sex acts and usage of sex toys.
This rise in Anti-LGBTQ Laws is not coincidental. On 23 October, 2024, the Institute for Journalism and Social Change (IJSC) published a 15-page report exposing that 17 mostly Christian Right-wing U.S organisations spent about $16.5 million fighting against sexual and reproductive health rights in Africa between 2019 and 2022. Three of the 17, including Alliance Defending Freedom, were named on the Trump-linked ‘Project 2025’ Advisory Board. Apart from the lavish lobbying efforts across the continent, including those linked to seemingly harmless family planning and sexual health rights conferences, the IJSC also uncovered gaps in documentation of how some of these funds were spent. These findings hint at concerted efforts towards mobilisation and organising. This explains why counterprotests against LGBTQ+ rights spring up with such efficiency.
Looking at Uganda, in particular, just 10 days after the Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed in 2023, the country hosted the first-ever “African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty”. The conference was essentially a smokescreen for a stronger statement on sexual and reproductive rights in Africa by Family Watch International (FWI), a Right-wing global think-tank with extensive reach as far as the United Nations, which has also partnered with groups like the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). In four years, FWI spent about $278,490 in Africa to further their goals, and organised conferences aimed at countering what it calls the ‘manipulation of sexual rights activists to promote the sexual agenda.’
Democracy in Africa’s 2023 report on FWI’s activities documents links to anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws in Nigeria and Ghana. It also uncovers a larger network of even richer organisations that work towards these singular aims, under the guise of ‘respect for African values.’ They have capitalised on the religious inclinations of African countries to ironically impose neo-colonial ideals about sexuality and family life, relying on steep indoctrination in these countries.
Every one of these organisations potentially prevents millions of Africans from living their truth. Even worse, these advocacy groups indirectly fuel physical attacks on these already disadvantaged individuals living on the fringes. Throughout the penultimate week of April 2026, the news cycle in Nigeria was dominated by reports of the death of a 100-level Madonna University Psychology student. According to these reports, his fellow students allegedly killed him because of suspicions about his sexuality and supposedly feminine mannerisms. The University has since come out to debunk these reports. But it is a marker of the violent nature of homophobia that many Nigerians on social media expressed solidarity with his would-be assailants.
As of June 2023, Social Development Direct reported that 56% of sexual and gender minorities in Southern and Eastern Africa had suffered violent attacks. The study also documented alarming rates of mental health struggles due to ongoing harassment, both physically and in online spaces. What this represents is a repressive environment in a continent with a centuries-old history of queer individuals existing as regular members of society.
Like many other tribes in Africa, including the Siwa in Egypt, Imbangala in Angola, and the Dagaaba of Ghana and the Ivory Coast, some tribes in Botswana have a long-documented history of same-sex relations, particularly the KhoiKoi, San, and Tswana (who make up the majority of modern-day Botswana). These include lexicons such as the Tswana word for men who have sex with men, matanyola, which is similar to the Hausa word, dan daudu, and the Gikuyu/Kikuyu (Kenya) words, onek and epanga, and oupanga, the Herero/Damara (Namibia) unisex term for same-sex partners.There are also established patterns of same-sex unions and seamless integration and acceptance within larger groups. Modern attempts to redefine queer existence, disguised as a return to a tabula rasa of religious ideals, only seek to fracture African countries’ cultural sovereignty further.
These laws are merely a distraction from socioeconomic and political concerns affecting the populace. There are more pressing issues in Africa to focus on, and people’s sexualities should not be treated as a crime. Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama admitted as much during a March 30, 2026, meeting with the country’s civil society organisations, where he said “grappling with the provisions of basic needs of education, healthcare, jobs, food, clothing, and shelter” was a more important issue. Therefore, African governments need to amend laws that infringe on the rights of their citizens and create an Africa without the limitations on how people can live. Until leaders and followers alike acknowledge who the real enemy is, and subsequently reject these cash props that turn us against brothers, sisters, and kin, the continent will remain stuck in a harmful cycle that’s proven to be quite effective at taking lives, not saving them. The only losers in this story are other Africans.
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