On April 15, 2026, a coalition of African feminist organizers in Benin announced a landmark legal victory: the country’s national ID system now allows gender markers to be amended without court approval, a first in West Africa. The decision came after years of advocacy by activists who framed their demands not as concessions to state power, but as the restoration of a right long denied by colonial and patriarchal systems. Yet even as celebrations erupted in Cotonou’s underground queer spaces, organizers privately acknowledged a sobering reality: the fight for bodily autonomy across the continent remains fragmented, with movements often forced to adapt to backlash without time to reflect on what strategies truly endure.
This tension—between urgent resistance and the need for historical grounding—lies at the heart of Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s new book, Seeking Sexual Freedom, and her decades of work as a Ghanaian feminist writer and activist. Sekyiamah, an award-winning podcaster and curator of festivals on African sexualities, argues that today’s movements risk repeating the mistakes of the past unless they actively reclaim and build upon older traditions of resistance. Her framework, rooted in the Akan principle of Sankofa—“go back and fetch it”—serves as both a methodological tool and a political act. “We are not starting from scratch,” she says in an interview with world-today-news. “The colonial project tried to erase our histories of bodily autonomy, but those histories are still here, buried in oral traditions, in the margins of official records, and in the daily practices of communities who refused to be silenced.”
The urgency of Sekyiamah’s argument is underscored by a wave of legislative and social backlash across Africa. In Kenya, the 2025 Finance Bill sparked mass protests after lawmakers proposed a 16% VAT on sanitary products, framing it as a fiscal measure while activists exposed its gendered impact. In Ghana, the Galamasey mining crisis has pitted communities against state security forces, with women-led groups documenting how environmental degradation disproportionately affects their access to water and land—echoing struggles from the 1980s when rural women organized against structural adjustment programs. Meanwhile, in Senegal, the once-vibrant Xarxar tradition—pre-wedding ceremonies where griots led explicit chants about sexual desires—has been reduced to sanitized post-marital rituals, a casualty of puritanical interpretations of Islam that gained traction under French colonial rule.
Decolonizing the Timeline
Sekyiamah rejects the framing of these challenges as isolated crises. Instead, she positions them as interruptions—a deliberate term she uses to describe how colonialism did not merely disrupt African societies but imposed a permanent state of exception. “When we treat colonialism as a static force, we organize defensively,” she explains. “But when we name it as an interruption, we reclaim the timeline. The work we’re doing now is not a deviation from history—it’s the continuation of a story that predates colonization.”
This reframing has practical implications. In Ghana, where Sekyiamah co-organized the Sexual Liberation Festival, activists have revived Adowa dances—traditionally used to celebrate female sexuality—as a form of protest against conservative moral policing. In Kenya, feminist economists are drawing on the Harambee tradition of communal savings to fund underground clinics providing abortion care, a direct response to the 2024 repeal of colonial-era restrictions that left many women vulnerable to criminalization. “These aren’t new ideas,” Sekyiamah notes. “They’re adaptations of what has always worked.”
Yet the colonial legacy persists in structural ways. Language remains a barrier: Anglophone and Francophone feminists often operate in parallel silos, despite shared struggles. Sekyiamah points to her recent trip from Ghana to Benin, where she was struck by the ease with which Ewe language connected communities across artificial borders. “Our movements are stronger when we recognize that the borders drawn by colonial maps are not the same as the networks that have always existed,” she says. “The challenge is to build infrastructure—digital, legal, and cultural—that reflects those realities.”
Liberated Zones and the Politics of Care
Where risk is highest, Sekyiamah’s work emphasizes the creation of “liberated zones”—spaces where safety is not an afterthought but the foundation of organizing. In Lagos, Nigeria, queer activists have transformed abandoned buildings into “safe houses” equipped with legal aid desks and encrypted communication tools, a response to the 2023 crackdown on LGBTQ+ gatherings. In Ghana, her festivals include mandatory training on digital security, recognizing that even offline gatherings can be surveilled. “The act of being fully human in these contexts is an act of defiance,” she says. “But defiance requires care—physical, emotional, and legal.”
This approach extends to faith-based communities, where Sekyiamah’s own journey offers a case study. Raised as a Christian, she internalized the demonization of African traditional religions (ATRs) through popular culture and colonial-era narratives. Yet her research revealed that ATRs—often erased from mainstream discourse—have long held spaces for gender and sexual diversity. In Yoruba traditions, the Iyawo priestesses were historically revered for their spiritual and sexual autonomy, while the Dogon people of Mali have long recognized non-binary identities within their cosmology. “These aren’t relics of the past,” Sekyiamah stresses. “They’re living traditions that can inform how we organize today.”
What Keeps the Work Going
Sekyiamah’s own resilience is tied to tangible victories, no matter how incremental. The Benin ID ruling is one such moment, but she also cites smaller wins: a 2025 court decision in Cameroon that recognized customary marriages as legally binding, or the growing number of African universities offering courses on queer history. “We need to document these moments,” she insists. “They prove that the future we’re building is already here, even if the systems around us haven’t caught up.”
Yet the work remains unfinished. In Uganda, where the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act expanded penalties to include “attempted homosexuality,” activists report a surge in underground organizing—but also in state surveillance of digital spaces. In Morocco, where a 2025 law criminalized “gender self-determination,” feminists are revisiting the Makhzen system of informal networks used during the 2011 protests to evade state repression. Sekyiamah’s message is clear: movements must be as agile as their opponents, but also rooted in the knowledge that resistance is not a linear process.
As she prepares to launch a new podcast series on African feminist archives, Sekyiamah’s focus is on the next generation of organizers. “The question isn’t whether we can win,” she says. “It’s how we ensure that future movements have the tools to do so. That’s why building archives isn’t just about preserving the past—it’s about giving future fighters a floor to stand on.”
The Benin ID ruling remains in effect, but its implementation faces resistance from conservative lawmakers who argue the change undermines “family values.” Meanwhile, in Accra, organizers are planning a Sankofa-themed festival to coincide with Africa Day, inviting participants to contribute their own stories of resistance to a digital archive. The work continues.
