On September 1–2, 2025, the Transitional Legislative Assembly, whose members were appointed by President Ibrahim Traoré passed an amendment to the Family and Persons Code. This amendment criminalizes same-sex conduct, punishable by 2 to 5 years in prison and fines of up to approximately $15,000, with deportation for repeat offenders who are foreign nationals.
Until this moment, same-sex sexual activity had always been legal in Burkina Faso. In fact, since 1996 the law has explicitly set an equal age of consent for all sexual relations (ILGA, p. 38).
It is important to stress that the mere absence of criminalization never translated into social acceptance. Decriminalization does not automatically shift public opinion, nor does it undo the deep-rooted stigma fueled by religion, colonial morality, and imported conservatism. The law may have been neutral, but queer people in Burkina Faso have long lived with hostility and discrimination, a reality that this new legislation has now brutally codified into law.
Queerness in Pre-Colonial Burkina Faso
Over the past couple of years, we have seen African leaders (inclusive of Ibrahim Traoré) make statements like “same-sex relationship is un-African,” this is a brutal colonial lie coming from people that are still mentally colonized along the lines of religion without understanding how this belief conflicts with their traditional African culture.
Among the Mossi, one of the largest ethnic groups in Burkina Faso, marriage systems sometimes allowed women to act as “female husbands.” In Mossi custom, there was even the role of the yir paga, literally the “wife of the wife’s household.” This was a union usually arranged by a senior wife herself. Another practice said that “a sister in a position of social seniority may ask her brothers for one of their daughters in order to marry her to a person of her choice.” Ethnographie des Mossi (cited in “Getting to Rights,” Danish Parliament, 2012, pp. 43–44)
These examples show that Mossi women could take wives and build households in ways that broke away from the strict heterosexual model that colonial religion later enforced.
At the royal court, Mossi kings also kept male pages, who often served not only as attendants but also as sexual companions. As one anthropological study put it: “Homosexual practices were not the same for a king, for a page in the service of that king among the Mossi of Burkina Faso, or for commoners.” Niang, Cheikh Ibrahima. “Homosexuality in Africa: Myth or Reality? An Anthropological Approach,” in AIDS in Africa: The Social Dimension (1994), p. 39. (Reproduced in 76crimes.com summary)
For the Bissa (Bisa) people, queerness was often linked to spirituality. They believed that diviners (spiritual healers) were chosen by the spirits to do their work. These diviners did not always fit into strict ideas of “man” or “woman.” Sometimes they carried both masculine and feminine qualities, and their respect came from the spirits, not from society’s rules. [Michèle Fainzang, Maladie, divination et reproduction sociale chez les Bisa du Burkina (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1986).](ISBN 2-85802-654-8)
The Lobi kinship system, where inheritance passed through both mothers and fathers, reminds us of what Engels described in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State as the early “mother-right.” In such systems, women held more power, and family lines could be continued through women rather than only through men. This flexibility is what made practices like female-to-female marriage possible in other African societies, such as the Igbo of Nigeria, where a woman could marry another woman to secure her lineage. Far from being “un-African,” these practices show that queerness had a place in precolonial social life.
Taken together, these fragments show that pre-colonial Burkinabè societies were not uniformly hostile to queerness. In fact, they contained social and spiritual mechanisms that recognized it, whether in the form of women marrying wives, spirit-chosen gender-variant diviners, or kinship systems that enabled alternatives to heterosexual marriage.
Although, among the Mossi, Lobi, and Bissa, the major ethnic groups of Burkina Faso, traditions made space for gender variance, ritual same-sex intimacy, and even female-female marriage. While written documentation is limited (due to colonial erasure), regional evidence across West Africa shows that queerness was integrated into cultural life long before Christianity and Islam imposed rigid binaries and taboos.
The Rise of Religious Hegemony
Religious hegemony means when the ideas of a dominant religion are treated as universal truth and “common sense” even for people who do not belong to that religion.
Colonization in Africa did not only take land and resources, it also forced Victorian Christianity and rigid forms of Islam onto our societies. Our own traditional beliefs, which were more flexible and open to change, were pushed aside.
As Africans began to practice the religions of the colonizers, the values of those religions started to be seen as the “normal” way to live. What had once been a tolerant culture toward queerness was replaced with a system where queer people were treated as sinners, criminals, or outcasts. In this way, religion created a cultural hegemony: it turned tolerance into persecution, and life into death for queer people.
Historical examples
In Nigeria, British missionaries in the 19th century condemned Igbo female-husband marriages as “unnatural” even though these unions were a respected way of continuing family lineages. female-husband marriages
Across Senegal and Mali, French colonial schools punished children for practicing local spiritual traditions, branding them as “pagan superstitions” while enforcing Catholic sexual morality.
In Burkina Faso
The Mossi kingdom, which had long mixed indigenous spirituality with flexible kinship systems (like yir paga, where women could take wives), came under heavy missionary influence. Catholic missions set up schools in Ouagadougou from the late 19th century onward, teaching European family ideals and condemning traditional practices.
In the northern Sahel regions, Islamic brotherhoods expanded with colonial support, introducing stricter moral codes that contrasted with older animist and spirit-based traditions. Practices that once gave space for gender-variant roles, such as spirit possession rituals, were marginalized or declared sinful.
In Defense of Queerness
When we demand liberation, it cannot come with conditions. Freedom must include all oppressed people, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or class.
We cannot claim to have achieved socialism, a system that promises equality, if queer people still live in fear. Any revolution that excludes queer liberation is incomplete, because oppression in one form always feeds oppression in another.
History already warns us about this. In many socialist movements, women were told their liberation would come “after the revolution,” that class struggle must come first, and gender struggle later. But postponing women’s equality only kept patriarchy alive inside movements that claimed to fight oppression. To repeat this mistake today by saying queer liberation can “wait” is to weaken African socialism from within.
During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks introduced radical reforms that challenged patriarchy. They legalized abortion, expanded women’s rights, allowed easy divorce, and even created the Zhenotdel (Women’s Department) to organize women at the grassroots. They also decriminalized homosexuality, making early Soviet Russia one of the most progressive states of its time.
But by the mid-1920s, party leaders began to argue that women’s liberation would “naturally” follow once socialism was secured. In 1930, the Zhenotdel was shut down, abortion rights were rolled back, homosexuality was recriminalized, and traditional family roles were reinforced. What had started as revolutionary reforms gave way to a return of patriarchy inside a society that still claimed to be emancipatory. Women in the Russian Revolution
Similarly, in many African liberation struggles, Algeria as an example, women fought as equals during the wars, but after independence they were told to “return to their homes” as national leaders prioritized state-building over gender liberation.
Putting women’s liberation “on hold” only prolonged their oppression. Queer liberation faces the same danger if it’s treated as secondary.
At the same time, we must recognize that laws alone will not protect queer people. Even in countries where queerness is legal, many still face rejection, violence, and death. In much of Africa, the weight of colonial religion and imported morality continues to frame queerness as “un-African,” making social acceptance the hardest struggle of all. Until society itself changes, queer Africans will remain under threat.
On Ibrahim Traoré and Anti-Imperialism
Ibrahim Traoré is celebrated today across Africa, and even within Marxist circles worldwide, for his uncompromising stance against imperialism. By expelling French forces and nationalizing Burkina Faso’s natural resources, he has positioned himself as a heroic figure who embodies the kind of leadership many Africans now demand. His actions have sparked a political shift across the continent, fueling calls for more leaders who reject neocolonial control.
But admiration for Traoré cannot mean silence on his stance toward queerness. By criminalizing same-sex relations in 2025, his government has presented queer identity as something “un-African”, a dangerous claim that reproduces the very colonial ideologies he says he is fighting.
Yet, while Traoré’s anti-imperialist credentials are clear, his position on queerness is deeply contradictory. He frames it as “un-African,” ignoring the reality that intolerance itself is the imported idea. What he reflects is not indigenous tradition but the religious hegemony of colonial Christianity and Islam, rigid belief systems that erased Africa’s more flexible and tolerant pre-colonial cultures. In truth, pre-colonial Burkina Faso contained practices and social roles that recognized queerness. To deny this history is to adopt the very colonial logic that Traoré claims to be resisting.
His fight against French domination is undermined by his submission to colonial religion’s moral codes, which have displaced and also continue to displace Africa’s own histories of flexibility and tolerance.
True decolonization cannot mean sovereignty only over minerals or borders, it must also reclaim the cultural and social memory of Africa, where queerness was part of life before Europe declared it a crime.
Fragility of Western Leftist Solidarity
When the news broke that Ibrahim Traoré had criminalized same-sex relations, the fragility of Western leftist solidarity with Burkina Faso became clear. Many who had loudly praised Traoré’s anti-imperialist stance suddenly pulled back their support, as if their solidarity was conditional.
This reaction shows a shallow understanding of the African context. Western leftists often expect African leaders to adopt their version of progressive politics, without recognizing the historical roots of queerphobia in Africa. They fail to see how colonial Christianity, imported Islamic orthodoxy, and the long shadow of European “civilizing” missions created today’s hostile environment for queer people.
By treating support for African liberation as conditional on immediate acceptance of Western-style queer rights, Western leftists repeat a colonial mistake: assuming their framework is universal, while ignoring the work needed to dismantle the cultural hegemony of imported religions. In doing so, they risk abandoning African struggles at the very moment when solidarity is most needed.
History gives us parallels. In Zimbabwe, many Western leftists initially supported the liberation war, but after independence they quickly withdrew solidarity when Mugabe’s government clashed with Western human rights frameworks, without engaging the deeper context of colonial legacies. In Palestine, Western leftist groups often celebrate anti-imperial resistance but hesitate or withdraw support when armed struggle or cultural positions do not align with Western progressive norms.
Real solidarity means holding the contradictions, celebrating anti-imperialist victories, while also challenging reactionary policies on gender and sexuality. It means understanding that queerness in Africa does not need to be imported from the West, because it was always there, long before colonial rule erased it.
What Must Be Done
It is fashionable today to speak of anti-imperialism while leaving untouched the colonial poison in our own souls. What use is it to drive out the French soldier, if the teachings of the priest and imam remain in our minds? What use is it to seize the mine, if we still defend the morality the colonizer imposed upon us? Whoever repeats the lie that queerness is “un-African” stands not with the people, but with the jailer.
First, the religious hegemony imposed by colonialism must be unmasked and destroyed. Christianity and Islam, as they were forged into colonial tools, continue to dictate what is “normal” and “moral” in African society. These creeds, imported and weaponized, have reduced tolerance to sin and erased the memory of our own cultures. There is no liberation while we bow to their dogma.
Secondly, we must demand unconditional solidarity. Western leftists reveal their fragility when their support for African sovereignty collapses the moment a contradiction appears. They cheer anti-imperialism only so long as it mirrors their own politics, withdrawing at the first sign of discomfort. This is solidarity in name only. True solidarity must grasp the contradiction: to celebrate victories against empire while struggling against reactionary laws, not to abandon the battlefield.
Finally, we must forge a new African common sense: one not dictated by priests, imams, or colonial administrators, but rooted in our own histories of tolerance, plurality, and collective survival. Only then can socialism in Africa be socialism in truth, not in slogans.
In Conclusion
True decolonization will not be complete until Africa restores its own tolerant cultural roots, dismantles imported religious hegemonies, and builds a socialism where liberation is for all, queer or straight, women or men, workers or peasants. Anything less is not freedom but a repetition of colonial violence in new clothes.