At least five West African countries have enacted or strengthened laws criminalizing same-sex relations since 2024, creating what campaigners call an unprecedented crackdown across the region. Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have criminalized same-sex intimacy for the first time, while Senegal doubled its maximum prison sentence to ten years. Ghana's parliament has passed a sweeping criminalization bill that now awaits the president's signature. The Guardian

Niger outlawed same-sex relations in February 2026. Mali and Burkina Faso followed with first-time criminalization within the past two years. All three countries are governed by military juntas — governments run by military officers who seized power, rather than by elected civilians — and Burkina Faso's junta explicitly framed its new law as an assertion of sovereignty in opposition to the West.

Senegal's path shows how an existing legal framework is being tightened rather than built from scratch. Article 319 of the penal code already criminalized same-sex relations as "acts against nature," carrying one to five years in prison. On 11 March 2026, the National Assembly passed a bill doubling the maximum sentence to ten years and criminalizing the "promotion" of homosexuality — meaning advocacy or public support for LGBTQ+ rights could itself be prosecuted. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed the law on 27 March 2026. BBC The Guardian

The enforcement machinery is already producing results. Between 4 and 9 February 2026, Senegalese authorities arrested at least 12 men in Dakar under Article 319 after television presenter Pape Cheikh Diallo was detained at a hotel and police used his phone to identify contacts. According to the HIV Justice Network, more than 60 people have been detained since the beginning of February on Article 319 charges, with 42 cases linked directly to the Diallo arrest. Sylvie Beaumont of the HIV Justice Network described the wave as "unprecedented in the region" because those arrested were subjected to forced HIV testing, with automatic intentional transmission charges added for those who tested positive. At least 22 of those detained have been identified as HIV positive and face additional penalties.

In Burkina Faso, at least two sets of convictions for homosexuality have been recorded since the law's passage. Thirteen transgender women were detained without trial from June to November 2025 and reported being beaten by the military unit that imprisoned them. Police are entrapping LGBTQ+ people through social media and demanding they denounce other community members, according to campaigners.

Ghana's parliament passed a law criminalizing LGBTQ+ "activities" in June 2026, the latest iteration of a bill first introduced in 2021. The bill has not been signed into law by the president.

The public-health fallout is acute, particularly in Senegal. HIV prevalence in the general adult population is below 0.5%, but among men who have sex with men it rises to 27.6%, according to Senegal's National Council for the Fight Against Aids (CNLS). In parts of Dakar, CNLS research suggests prevalence as high as 49.6%. A 2024 study in the journal Aids estimated that male key populations — epidemiological shorthand for groups at higher risk of HIV exposure — accounted for up to 79% of HIV transmissions in Senegal between 2012 and 2021. Senegal has maintained one of Africa's most resilient HIV prevention systems, built partly on reaching men who have sex with men, sex workers, and other key populations.

The new laws now threaten that infrastructure. Alice Bordaçarre of the International Federation for Human Rights warned that organizations working on fundamental rights, including HIV prevention, could be considered as promoting LGBTQ+ rights under Senegal's broadly framed criminalization of "promotion." Amadou Diouf, who helped run a Dakar refuge providing emergency shelter and community support for LGBTQ+ people, fled to the Gambia in February 2026 after being attacked by neighbours and family members. The refuge subsequently ceased all activities because workers no longer considered themselves safe.

Anthony Oluoch of Pan Africa ILGA, a continental LGBT+ rights campaign group, said the new or harsher laws reflect political opportunism rather than genuine popular demand. The legislative trend is being reinforced by cross-border organizing. The African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty, a forum widely seen as influential in shaping anti-LGBTQ+ legislation across the continent, held its first three annual sessions in Uganda. Next year it will convene in Burkina Faso and then Eswatini, bringing the forum to West and southern Africa for the first time.

That conference network has transatlantic roots. American religious-right groups have helped establish a global infrastructure sharing ideas and funding to restrict gay and trans rights, according to reporting from 2023. Ultra-conservative campaigners have flown to "family values" conferences in Africa to share tactics with allies opposing abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. A Guardian editorial in March 2024 noted that campaigners identified US evangelists as fueling discrimination and hatred across the continent. The phenomenon is not confined to Africa: Slovakia amended its constitution to recognize only male and female sexes and made adoption nearly impossible for same-sex couples in October 2025, and European far-right politicians have increasingly weaponized anti-trans legislation.

The broader context here matters for understanding why this is happening now. The three countries that newly criminalized same-sex relations — Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso — are all under military rule, where legislatures operate without the constraints of competitive politics. Burkina Faso's framing of its law as an assertion of sovereignty against the West aligns with the juntas' broader anti-French, anti-Western posture, making LGBTQ+ rights a convenient proxy for nationalist legitimacy. Senegal and Ghana, by contrast, are electoral democracies, and their legislative pushes suggest that anti-LGBTQ+ measures have become a political tool that cuts across regime type. The next test will be whether Ghana's president signs the criminalization bill into law, and whether Senegal's HIV prevention system, long regarded as a continental model, can survive the enforcement of a law that effectively criminalizes the outreach on which it depends.