In 2019, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah had a dream: a pan-African feminist and queer festival where we could talk freely about sexuality. The Adventures Live Festival was inaugurated that year in Accra, the capital of Ghana, where she lives. On November 5 and 6, the fourth edition of this event will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, around the theme “Sexual Utopia: here, now and beyond”.
The exact location will not be revealed to ticket holders until 24 hours before kick-off: being a feminist and activist in Africa is not without risks, and Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah wants to make sure she can cross the border without clutter and that the participants will be safe. On the program, workshops (a “guide to fucking”another dedicated to pleasure), debates (for example on the best time and the right way to reveal your HIV status), sessions with sex workers and with trans people…
At the end of October, installed in front of her computer in the house where she is raising her little girl alone, adopted three years ago, Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah laughs easily and speaks loudly. Talking about sex became her profession, and she even made a book of it. Released in July 2021 in English, The Sex Lives of African Women (“the sexual life of African women”, untranslated) compiles 32 testimonies collected from 2015 to 2020. Bibi, a 35-year-old Nigerian, recounts a romantic getaway to Morocco; Nura opens up about the pros and cons of her marriage to a polygamous Senegalese; Kuchenga, who defines himself as “trans black woman”laments being attracted mostly to white men…
A retreating freedom
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah affirms it: a sexual revolution is at work on the African continent, bringing in its wake the inevitable “backlash”, the “backlash”, theorized in 1991 by the American feminist Susan Faludi. “Technology and social networks have, she says, liberated speech by creating spaces where younger generations can talk about sex. And as soon as we start talking, we start asking questions. »
But, in Ghana, a bill criminalizing homosexuality a little more still is currently under discussion in Parliament. And across the African continent, measures aimed at reducing sexual freedom are experiencing a new impetus linked, according to her, to “ a global alliance of conservative forces and the influence of lobbies emanating from far-right American evangelicalism”.
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