Ghanaian presidential election results will not improve LGBTQ rights
This week, we start in Ghana, where activists remain skeptical that the new administration will improve LGBTQ rights. Next we visit Uganda, and look at how deaf women and girls are especially affected by gender-based violence. Finally, we stop in Nigeria to meet photographer Dola Posh shares her experience with postnatal depression.
But first, in Kenya, protests have broken out over the rising cases of femicide, with hundreds taking to the streets to demand justice. According to Africa Data Hub, about 500 women were killed in Kenya between 2016 and 2023, with at least 97 femicides reported between August and October 2024 alone.
While President William Ruto recently pledged $700,000 to fight femicide, activists say this is not enough. They are calling for stronger laws, better support for survivors, and real action to address the root causes of gender-based violence.
Peaceful demonstrations took place in cities like Nairobi, Mombasa, and Lodwar. However, in Nairobi last Tuesday, police responded with tear gas to disperse the crowds and arrested several protesters, including Irungu Houghton, executive director of Amnesty International Kenya.
Human rights groups have widely criticized the police response, calling it a violation of the right to protest. Activists argue that such actions silence voices and make it harder to hold the government accountable.
Protesters are demanding more than promises—they want action to end femicide and ensure women in Kenya can live without fear.
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Cameroon: How churches are a breeding ground for the exclusion of Persons with Disabilities
In 2017, a friend invited me to a church in Bamenda, the capital of Cameroon’s Northwest region. I hoped to improve my relationship with God through the pastor’s message. I traveled hundreds of kilometres just to attend the program, which I saw as a life-changing opportunity. But I received a shocker, though, when the same pastor chose to castigate me for being blind.
“God has told me that you will transform from a beggar to someone with a purpose in life because your sight will be restored today,” the pastor declared. I was angered by this. I had never been a beggar on the street but like many other PWDs, I was condemned to this fate because of my disability.
I left the church saddened.
As part of the constant exclusion of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in Cameroon, churches have become exclusionary spaces. Many pastors look down at PWDs as beggars seeking miraculous healing, rather than attending to their spiritual needs. Based on their preaching, it would seem that the churches view PWDs as souls not worthy of spiritual nourishment but instead destined for an eternity in hell.
Deaf women in Uganda and their struggles with abusive relationships.
Gender-based violence (GBV) disproportionately affects women and girls who are deaf, partly because of communication barriers compounded by a legal system that is frequently inadequate to meet their needs.
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‘I wasn’t me any more’ – a photographer tackles her postnatal depression
Dola Posh has multiple identities: Photographer; woman; Nigerian; mother; Briton.
Yet after giving birth, she no longer felt sure who she was.
Six days after her daughter was born, she was lying in a bed in an English hospital, in the midst of a covid lockdown.
She worried about how her life had changed and if she would ever again do what she loved – taking pictures.
Unable to visit, relatives kept on calling to check up on her and the baby. After a difficult pregnancy, Dola felt under pressure.
Her mother was thousands of miles away in the place she had left two years earlier – Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city.
All this put her “brain in a very dark place… I thought: ‘I’m me; the baby’s out, I’m still me.’ But no, I wasn’t me any more.”