Ghana: And when I see the community like this, I see so much life in them.

by Carl Collison

Accra is one of those places where you can’t swing a rosary without it hitting a pop-up, prosperity-promising Pentecostal place of prayer. It is, like the rest of Ghana, a deeply religious place.

Businesses carry names such as God is One Special Food Joint and Christ is the Answer Boutique. There’s the odd Holy Trinity Guesthouse, God’s Time is Best Cafe and God With Us Professional Nails. Billboards and posters beseech people to “Come back to Jesus”.

“People here like saying that because we are so religious, all Ghanaians are going to heaven,” an LGBTQIA+ activist tells me wryly.

If Ghanaian religious conservatives are to be believed, though, the saying would instead go something along the lines of “all Ghanaians, except queer folk”.

Criminalised in a conservative context

A 2018 Human Rights Watch report found that “the combination of the criminalisation of adult consensual same-sex conduct [under Section 104 of the country’s Penal Code] and the profoundly religious and socially conservative Ghanaian context has an insidious effect on individual self-expression. Read more via Mail & Guardian