DOUALA — LGBTQ+ activists across francophone Africa say Western governments and global foundations are ignoring funding gaps for French-speaking countries where repression differs from English-speaking regions.
Last year, the Global Philanthropy Project reported that just one per cent of global LGBTQ+ funding between 2013 and 2020 had been focused on francophone countries.
Patrick Fotso sees these issues first hand. His HIV prevention group and clinic, Alcondoms Cameroun, is among the most prominent sexual-health organizations in Cameroon, a mostly French-speaking country. It doubles as an LGBTQ+ advocacy centre. The tray of folders is a far cry from the reams of data and communications campaigns Fotso's group has collated to help fight HIV.Fotso knows that his peers in anglophone countries have bigger budgets to try and change the societal attitudes and government policies that drive LGBTQ+ repression.
At global LGBTQ+ conferences, Spanish is more likely to be heard during panels than French, and there are rarely budgets for interpreters to translate for French-speaking advocates, he said. Kouassiaman said French-speaking countries in Africa are generally less politically stable, making it hard for advocates to publish information about their activities, in case their rights are suddenly suspended.
"In English-speaking African countries, it revolves around criminalization," said Idibouo, who lives in Ivory Coast.Kouassiaman adds that some countries that have made the most strides in LGBTQ+ rights are those that historically had a high number of HIV cases — which are primarily English-speaking. That's because global funding for health clinics helped build decades of activist networks that could capture data and advocate for civil rights.
His group serves LGBTQ+ people in the country's anglophone minority, and finds access to funding for French-speaking countries"very limited." The Commonwealth has a civil-society mandate which allows activists to present at high level meetings. It also means LGBTQ+ activists with a group called the Commonwealth Equality Network can speak with their own governments as well as those of partner countries, to try pushing for civil rights.
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