[ROAPE] The homophobia of Pan-African regimes

Source: Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE)  |  Published: 2026-07-31

Category: 아프리카 정치경제  |  Keywords: state, governance, policy

West Africa has experienced a series of significant geopolitical developments in recent years, with the potential to reshape both its political landscape and economic trajectory. These are, in many ways, years in which decades have passed. Longstanding regimes have collapsed, populations have expanded rapidly, and economic growth has, in aggregate terms, generally trended upwards across the region. Yet these positive developments have been accompanied by equally serious challenges. A persistent jihadist insurgency continues to destabilise the Sahel, military coups have undermined the post-90s move towards democratisation, and regional institutions such as ECOWAS have seen their legitimacy increasingly questioned, particularly in light of the emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States as a contender to the Pan-African aspiration of politically uniting the region.

An increased repression of LGBT+ communities

Among these developments, one particularly alarming trend, and the focus of this submission, concerns the resurgence of legislative and political repression targeting gender and sexual minorities. Recent developments in Burkina Faso and Mali illustrate the severity of this trend. In Burkina Faso, the military government under Captain Ibrahim Traoré introduced legislation imposing a maximum 5-year prison sentence for homosexuality. This was later unanimously passed by his transitional assembly, materially jeopardising the social acceptance and relative safety of a country where LGBT Burkinabés had previously lived without fear of imprisonment (The Guardian, 2025). This change followed a similar law announced by the military government of neighbouring Mali, which also banned same-sex relationships and introduced mandatory 2-7 year prison sentences for an entire community of people, supposedly in the name of defending ‘traditional and moral values’ (Kojoué, 2024).

These developments, while alarming, are not entirely surprising when situated within the broader political context. Both regimes have simultaneously overseen restrictions on political and civil liberties such as the right of public assembly, alongside crackdowns on journalists and dissidents (Hughes, 2025). However, these actions must not be divorced from the context of the ongoing deadly Sahel insurgency as well as the structural economic constraints associated with longstanding patterns of dependency – i.e. Françafrique. As I have outlined elsewhere, if extremism is to be understood as a germ, poverty is the condition that allows said germ to spread rapidly (Doucouré 2024), with said poverty being directly attributable to the persistence of uneven trade dependencies and extractive commerce rooted in colonialism. It is no coincidence that in two of the poorest and most economically exploited nations of our planet, we may observe serious political instability, the rise of military rule, and extremism. With that said, it would be analytically insufficient to attribute the rise in the persecution of gender and sexual minorities solely to military governance or neocolonial pressures. Indeed, the Republic of Senegal offers an intriguing and instructive mini-case study through which we may complicate the easy answers to questions to be asked of this trend. This is a country that, per Regional/Central bank data, attained for its citizens over 85% of the GDP per capita of both Burkina Faso and Mali, combined. Although, like many emerging economies, the material reality of this relatively strong economic performance is deeply uneven, with poverty very much remaining a significant issue in Senegal.

Concerning the rise in homophobic repression across West Africa, Senegal is a useful case study to consider here not primarily because of its economic position relative to Burkina Faso and Mali but, rather, because the country has generally been praised by geopolitical observers for having preserved a ‘democratic tradition’ (Center for Strategic and International Studies,2024); the transfer of power from civilian to civilian has persisted in spite of domestic and numerous regional constitutional crises (Yabi and Holman, 2024). The country has never experienced a single coup d’etat, a matter of significance given that the fact that Africa as a whole has experienced, until 2010, at least 169 coup attempts – with 51.5% ultimately being successful seizures of power (Powell and Thyne 2011, p. 255).

These democratic and constitutional credentials are to be celebrated… but in reality, this fact has historically been irrelevant to the rights of gender and sexual minorities in the country. After all, homosexuality has been banned since 1966 (Republic of Senegal, 1965, Art. 319). In the contemporary era, the Pan-Africanist government of the PASTEF movement has doubled the existing 5-year prison sentence outlined in the 1966 Penal Code, also taking the opportunity to announce new laws in March 2026 criminalising the ‘promotion’ and ‘financing’ of LGBT rights (Négoce, 2026). The civilian-led government of Senegal, voted into power with 54% of the popular vote just two years earlier, has legislated an even harsher punishment than those imposed by its military-rule neighbours in Mali and Burkina Faso. From this, we may conclude that the form of government is a matter of very little, if any, significance in the rise of legislative and political persecution targeting LGBT communities.

This raises a crucial analytical question: if both civilian and military regimes, each espousing a commitment to Pan-Africanism, are converging around similar forms of repression, what explains this trend? While public opinion data from the past has indicated a comparatively low acceptance of homosexuality across sub-Saharan Africa (Pew Research Center, 2013), this should not be hastily interpreted as evidence of static cultural values. Indeed, it is useful here to sincerely consider Dr Rama Salla Dieng’s warning against reaching for the ‘usual explanations’ of ‘religion, culture, African values’ (Dieng, 2026). Digging deeper, a more convincing interpretation situates these developments within a politics of division that is both historically rooted and politically functional. In this context, anti-LGBT sentiment is not simply a reflection of cultural or popular attitudes, but rather a mechanism through which political elites mobilise support, consolidate authority, and construct a unified national identity in opposition to a perceived external threat.

In other words, while the persecution of gender and sexual minorities has historical antecedents (including inherited colonial legal frameworks and the nation-building questions and anxieties of the early post-colonial years), its current articulation reflects a strategic mobilisation of anti-imperialist rhetoric. Homosexuality is symbolically associated with Western liberalism, allowing governing elites to position themselves as defenders of cultural authenticity and national sovereignty. Indeed, this was quite explicitly described by Amadou Ba (Minister for Culture) as being ‘outside Senegalese customs, traditions and culture’ (RFI, 2026). However, in doing so, these governing elites depart significantly from the intellectual and political traditions of the Pan-Africanism that they claim to uphold.

By returning to the theoretical foundations and political praxis of key figures within this tradition, it becomes clear that the contemporary targeting of gender and sexual minorities represents not a continuation, but a misapplication, of Pan-African thought. This misapplication is not accidental, but intentional. Whether in Senegal, Mali, or Burkina Faso, we may observe a failure by their respective civilian and military rulers to deliver on the radical economic outlook that was promised and had thus far functioned as a source of popular legitimacy for their governance. In other words, Pan-Africanism was a wind of change that toppled governments and brought a younger generation to power; yet in the years that have immediately followed, nothing has changed in the economic realities of concerned citizens. This has created a serious political challenge, with Senegal’s PASTEF having gone from enjoying the support of student protestors in 2023-2024, to being the target of student protests in 2025-2026. A student was killed by the police in the ensuing government crackdown, while other students voicing a growing youth dissatisfaction with Ousmane Sonko, the founder and leader of PASTEF: ‘Sonko nous a vendu du rêve, mais il n’a rien changé »/ ‘Sonko sold us a dream, but he hasn’t changed anything’ (Soumaré, 2026).

‘It’s a shame – we weren’t expecting this, especially coming from this regime, ’ said Pathe Baila Barry, a classmate of Diallo, who said he was beaten in the raid on his dormitory (Crowe, 2026).

Though the move to oppose homosexuality had been a campaign promise of PASTEF, the parliamentary approval of the new anti-LGBT measures have come just weeks after the government’s assault on student protestors. Human bodies are serving as a convenient distraction from the failures of these Pan-African political elites; ‘and distractions, in politics, are rarely accidental’ (Dieng, 2026). Reorienting ourselves towards the Pan-African mission that they claim to serve, we find an ideological mismatch between the rhetoric and theory of the region’s Pan-African forefathers on the one hand, and the recent actions taken by contemporary Pan-African political leadership on the other. To explore this, we must first briefly define Pan-Africanism , outlining the liberatory and humanist ethos of the term and concept.

Pan-Africanism is compatible with LGBT+ rights

Pan-Africanism, like any philosophy, has various roots and competing meanings. Early conceptualisations tend to be traced to the Black (or interchangeably African) diaspora among whom various conferences were held during the early 20th century. These events took place in London (1900), Paris (1919), Brussels (1921), Lisbon (1923) and New York (1927). Their locations somewhat reflect the diaspora-oriented focus of the discourses and ideology discussed, as set out during the first congress at the turn of the century (McEachrane, 2020, p. 236) organised by Henry Sylvester Williams (Richards, 2020). Indeed, it was at this conference that W.E.B. Du Bois remarked, in his signed address to the nations of the world advocating for pan-Africanism, that ‘the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line’ (Du Bois, 1900). He repeated this concept of race forming the dividing ‘line between the bond and free’ in The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois, 1903, p. 190), one among his broader oeuvre in the service of his Pan-African longing for ‘a new human unity, pulling the ends of earth nearer, and all men, black, yellow, and white’ (Du Bois, 1903, p. 63).

Subsequent Pan-African congresses built on these themes, including the 1945 congress held in Manchester, which, according to Pan-African scholars, was ‘seen as the apogee of the movement’ (Adi, 2018. P. IX). Yet while the earlier Pan-African Congresses had focused primarily on race and the affairs of the diaspora, the 1945 congress took a different direction and reoriented its focus towards the African continent. Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah was notably in attendance at this conference, a man who would go on to lead Africa’s first successful post-colonial independence movement. Other African independence figures in attendance at the 1945 congress alongside Nkrumah, included Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta and Malawi’s Hastings Banda. If the geographic and ideological reorientation following this conference is not made apparent by the attendance of these historical giants, then we may instead consider the mere fact that subsequent Pan-African congresses were finally held on African soil (Geiss, 1969, p. 187). The continental focus of these later discourses and events highlighted a growing call for a global so

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