Anti-LGBTQ discrimination has cost East African countries billions
This week, we start in Lesotho, where clothing workers are worried about losing their jobs because of Trump’s new 50% tariffs.. Next, we travel to the DRC, where people living in IDP camps are being forced to leave by rebel groups. Finally, we stop in Afghanistan, where two queer women have been arrested by the Taliban and face the risk of a long jail term or execution.
But first, in Northern Kenya, another long drought—the worst in 40 years—is making life even harder for many communities and pushing families into extreme poverty and desperation.
In villages where survival depends on livestock and water, women walk for hours under the hot sun to find water. When they arrive, the wells are often nearly dry. Some families are forced to trade their animals to have water brought in by truck.
As the drought gets worse, its effects are felt most by women and girls, who bear the heaviest burden of this crisis.
Desperate families are increasingly marrying off their young daughters in exchange for livestock. In areas where it hasn’t rained in months, child marriage is becoming more widespread. Gender-based violence is also on the rise. As grazing land becomes more scarce, girls are sent far from home to care for animals and are often left vulnerable. Some face sexual violence with no one around to help.
Although local organisations like IREMO are doing what they can to support affected families, it’s still barely enough. Kenya is facing some of the harshest impacts of climate change, and sadly, many young girls in this region are likely to face futures marked by hunger and abuse.
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When Jamiu Jubril, 23, gained admission to study English at a university in north-central Nigeria, he knew little of the uphill task he was about to embark on for the next four years. Being a blind student, the journey was steeper than initially envisaged and on many occasions, he was broken.
“My passion was to go to school and study English. It kept ringing in my head even when it seemed impossible,’’ Jubril tells Minority Africa.
The ‘impossible’ he refers to is the reality of the Nigerian education system for many visually impaired students. A major hurdle Jubril had to overcome was getting his hands on accessible format copies to make learning possible for him.
“In the department of English, in any school, you will be given a lot of books to read… which include novels, plays and poems and even course materials. A lot of books are usually prescribed and they are all in hard copies. They were all inaccessible to me,” he says.
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When Benedict and his family arrived in Uganda from Democratic Republic of Congo in late 2024, Jesuit Refugee Services became his compass, offering more than just food aid. The English lessons he received turned a foreign place into a navigable pathway to independence. So last week’s news of the closure of the organization set him adrift.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says. “Everything has stopped. I am stuck now.”
With aid cut off, he and his wife, with their two infants and a teenage daughter, are surviving on dwindling rations, mostly rice, beans and posho, a form of corn flour. Benedict, who requested that only his first name be used for fear of being stigmatized, expects that food aid will end soon.