How do we hold on to meaningful connections when they come with risks we cannot ignore? For the LGBT+ community, this tension is deeply familiar; the power of digital visibility but also its vulnerability.
Digital platforms such as social media, dating sites and queer-centred apps and websites have revolutionized how people connect. For LGBT+ individuals in Africa, it became possible to organize and build a community across borders. Ugandan activist Kasha Jacqueline called the online movement a ‘Digital Uprising’. However, the hypervisibility amplifies risks: state surveillance, data breaches, and censorship, leaving queer individuals vulnerable to psychological and physical harm.
By implementing stringent anti-LGBT+ laws, Kenya, Uganda and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region weaponize digital spaces and force a cruel trade-off between visibility and safety.
Criminalization and censorship: queer voices silenced
Kenya’s Penal Code (Sections 162, 163 and 165) criminalizes same-sex relationships, punishable with up to 14 years in prison, framing LGBT+ existence as “against the order of nature.” This narrative fuels digital abuse: KICTANet reports that the LGBT+ community are disproportionately targeted by cyberviolence compared to heterosexual internet users from hate campaigns on Twitter (now X) to data breaches such as CCTV leaks.
Censorship in creative outlets compounds these issues with the ban on films like Rafiki and I am Samuel by the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB), on the grounds of encouraging same-sex relationships. This was further strengthened by Netflix’s pact with the KFCB to restrict LGBT+ content in Kenya and to classify content according to the board. Such discriminatory moderation is not exclusive to Kenya: Instagram has been reported for shadow-banning LGBT+ content in various parts of the world.
Kenya’s crackdown reflects a global pattern of state-sanctioned suppression. Agreements like Netflix’s pact with the KFCB, justified as “localization”, functionally enable state censorship while the big-tech companies prioritize market access more than fundamental human rights. A Nation Media Group (2023) blog post observed that the LGBT+ community cannot report harassment, abuse, or violence matters to the police as ‘akin to a criminal turning themselves in’ according to the country’s law.
It is also highlighted that politicians weaponize the community to divert attention from poor governance, particularly during election cycles. Donor nations hypocritically condemn the anti-LGBT+ laws, yet sign agreements that do not tie to human rights policy reforms.
Kenya’s Data Protection Act is not implemented when it comes to the queer community, which can be reflected in instances such as the police infiltrating apps to entrap users.
Surveillance and hacking: queer access denied
Kenya and Uganda represent parallel systems of LGBT+ oppression through legal and digital means. Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA 2023) imposes even harsher penalties, including the death penalty. These legal frameworks transform digital spaces, once a place of refuge, into dangerous potential traps through state-complicit tech-violence, targeted digital suppression and collateral damage in industries such as healthcare. Activists have identified data and email theft as the greatest digital security risks in Uganda.
Digital risks in Uganda are acute, with LGBT+ activists and community members frequently being targeted. Amnesty International’s report highlights the prevalence of technology-facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TfGBV) in the country, including impersonation, hacking and coordinated misinformation campaigns. State actors have also been implicated in orchestrating these violations, often under the guise of morality enforcement or cybercrime prevention.
While LGBT+ healthcare is globally recognized, the AHA 2023 has forced healthcare providers in Uganda to withdraw services specific to marginalized communities with the threat of license revocation under accusations of “promoting homosexuality.” This illustrates the greater clampdown on human rights defenders’ work both online and offline.
These persecutions are a calculated, consolidated abuse of power, reading from the same handbook of political distraction from bad governance. They are used as a unifying tool during political campaigns, invoking “protecting African values.” While policing budgets are expanded through foreign aid, the institutionalized vulnerability is seen through queer-focussed NGO’s online attacks, such as through Zeus malware and donor data leaks, to defund critical work. Such stark contrast to the government’s inaction on the general public’s access to affordable housing, employment and healthcare.
Big-tech companies like Meta, which thrive through engagement-driven hate speech, need to be held accountable and must stop using the excuse of outsourcing their defence of content moderation.
A strategic call to action, such as challenging anti-LGBT+ laws by exposing their weaknesses through the legal system, can disrupt these unjust structures. Arguments that anti-LGBT+ laws violate treaties, suing governments for unconstitutional surveillance and defending the rights to privacy for all individuals can be a place to start.
Entrapment and suppression: queer lives erased
The situation in the MENA region reinforces LGBT+ repression through vaguely worded laws criminalizing “debauchery,’’ “prostitution,” or “violating public morality”. Authorities weaponize Egypt’s 1961 Law on “Combating Prostitution.” victims are charged with up to 5 years and fines with the authorities using invasive methods as examinations to “collect evidence,” which is a practice condemned by Human Rights Watch.
Since 2018, policemen in Egypt have entrapped gay men on apps such as Grindr, which have failed to protect their users. To add to this, suppression extends further through censorship laws in the media and online platforms. These patterns reveal a system that punishes platforming of queer individuals, and the region weaponizes both media and technology to target queer individuals.
Most “public-morality” laws stem from colonial-era penal codes and are now weaponized as “Western corruption.” MENA countries outsource the enforcement of these structures through religious institutions, which also leads to them gaining political influence.
While outright legal reform, such as decriminalizing homosexuality through constitutional laws and amending hate crime bills, may take longer to implement, other strategies can be implemented. Decentralized technology to bypass state-surveillance could be deployed, such as the use of encrypted tools like VPN’s or using apps such as Signal for communication. Additionally, trade agreements and development aid require the recipient countries to adhere to privacy laws in their countries and to penalize firms that facilitate data leaks.
Building safer futures
Organizing is crucial for the LGBT+ community, and online organizing adds another necessary angle to it. Digital threats not only create an exclusion for many but also fracture collective movements.
Funding for local digital safety training is needed to further strengthen the efforts to create safer online platforms. This can also be facilitated by partnering with organizations such as Access Now that defend the digital rights of vulnerable communities.
Global platforms like Meta need to move beyond their performative policies and protect the LGBT+ community. These platforms need transparent data practices, human-centred design, and implementation of localized safeguards. These steps are in the right direction to identify, prevent and mitigate digital harms.
Foreign actors such as the US-funded Family Life Network lobby for harsh laws that reward neo-colonialism with political favours. The question remains: how can a country break free when the oppression runs so deep?
Ultimately, online safety demands more than encryption and firewalls; it requires dismantling laws, political cynicism, and foreign-funded moral panics.
S.O. Awuor is a researcher working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human rights. Their work investigates how technologies impact vulnerable communities, with a particular focus on Black people, Africans, and queer individuals. Awuor examines algorithmic bias, digital surveillance, and internet safety, highlighting the importance of governance and informed communities in shaping this field.