Female coach breaking male barriers in African football
This week, we start in Kenya, where a female football coach is breaking barriers in men’s football. Next, we head to Nigeria, where people with disabilities continue to face daily challenges and discrimination despite legal protections. Finally, we stop in Lebanon, where African students in Beirut are torn between staying amidst the conflict or returning home.
But first, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) has rejected a proposal to allow bishops to bless same-sex marriages. ACSA represents over four million members across South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Ewastini, with the Church of England as its parent church.
In December 2023, the Church of England allowed bishops to bless same-sex unions, but this has only been adopted in South Africa and St. Helena, where LGBTQ rights are fully recognized.
Recently, Bishops Raphael Hess and Stephen Diseko urged ACSA to reconsider its stance, presenting a proposal to the Provincial Synod, the church’s highest decision-making body. They called for the need for respect, love and safe spaces for queer people within the church. However, the Synod reaffirmed that marriage remains defined as between one man and one woman.
Inclusive and Affirming Ministries, a South African LGBTQ rights group, expressed disappointment, stating that this not only encourages hostility and marginalization of queer people but also sets back the journey towards inclusion.
This situation shows the struggle to reconcile traditional beliefs with the growing understanding of LGBTQ rights in faith communities. But regardless, queer rights groups will continue advocating for a more accepting and compassionate church community.
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Female coach breaking male barriers in African football
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Queer Nigerian students are finding community in a campus “Love House”
The first time Janet met Ayo*, the latter played a Todrick Hall song in a banking hall, hoping to catch Janet’s attention. And like drawing a moth to a flame, it worked.
“It was on Grindr that I met Ayo again,” Janet says. ”I was elated, mostly because I was now to be among people who would certainly understand the loneliness.”
Before gaining admission into the University of Ibadan in 2019, Janet, bold and relentless about his identity, had attracted unwanted attention that led to him being kidnapped and kitoed due to his Facebook presence. Despite the ordeal leaving him traumatised, it strengthened his resolve to continue to be himself and to share his thoughts on queer identity, drawing shock and awe from students and lecturers alike. Meeting Ayo, Janet says, was pivotal to their student experience.
“I was added to a Whatsapp group that same day. We were a total of five members, students who were equally as lonely as I was and had met each other through stereotyping and Grindr,” Janet says. “We were called Love House. It’s a community where nothing but love and kindness foster the bonds which bind us, a safe space. On the first physical gathering I attended, I still remember the warmth that tugged at my stomach, meeting these people who would go on to shape my experience as a student on this campus.”
What can African history teach us about queer belonging?
From the 1960s to the early 1980s, Ukonu’s Club was hailed as Eastern Nigeria’s most popular television program. The show featured a variety of entertainers like Mazi Ukonu, the show’s namesake and Christy Essien. In the 1970s, one unique entertainer made a name for themselves on the show, an individual by the name of Area Scatter.
The story of Area Scatter begins sometime during the civil war, when Scatter, who was previously a civil servant, disappeared into the forest and emerged seven months and seven days later as a well-endowed woman. Per their admission, the gods had blessed them with supernatural powers that enhanced both their musical talent as well as their feminine qualities.
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Growing a ‘word forest’: the Kenyan teacher trying to save her language from extinction
In a community centre made of glass bottles, Juliana Loshiro stands before her pupils, a group of village elders. Sitting in a semicircle, they listen and repeat simple words and greetings in Yaakunte (also called Yaaku), the language of their tribe.
Though it might seem strange that even older people cannot speak the language, one of the pupils stands up and explains why he is in the class: his grandparents died before they could teach him Yaakunte, he says, and his mother, a Maasai, did not know the language. “So we got lost.”