18 April 2010 — African Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Manifesto, Kenya
On April 18, 2010, a small group of activists from across Africa held a roundtable discussion in Nairobi, Kenya, during which they drafted the African Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex (LGBTI) Manifesto, which is also known as the Queer African Manifesto.
According to the Black Agenda Report, the Manifesto is
“a short but foundational document, the manifesto was produced at a moment that witnessed the ongoing challenges of neocolonialism, imperialism, state violence, and economic duress across the continent—alongside the receding rights of African lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) communities. At the time the manifesto was written, homosexuality was criminalized in more than thirty African nations and draconian anti-gay legislation had been passed in Uganda and Nigeria. The manifesto provided a radical challenge to conservative ideas about African identity, challenging the claim that LGBTI identity is “un-African” and reducible to European influence or colonial inheritance. Moreover, in its evocation of questions of justice, self-determination, and personal liberty, the manifesto recast received ideas concerning African liberation: it claimed the LGBTI struggle as an indelible and urgent part of the history of Pan-Africanism and the ongoing movements for Black sovereignty. As we have recently seen the project of pan-Africanism floundering in the backward and hateful morass of homophobia and transphobia, we would do well to return to the African LGBTI Manifesto/Declaration’s liberatory provocations.”