Jamil F. Khan | Senegal’s anti-LGBT laws stick long after France’s colonial exertion

A recent clip of a Senegalese politician emphatically disavowing LGBTQI+ identities as a threat to Senegalese values has been circulated online. After seeing this, and reports of the subsequent advancement of harsher penalties directed at queer people, I reached out to a friend to confirm the truth of the matter. They confirmed that the situation is increasingly dire and characterised the legal situation as a modern-day witch hunt against queer people.

Senegal’s contemporary anti‑LGBT laws are being framed by politicians and religious authorities as the guardrails of cultural integrity, moral coherence, and national sovereignty. Yet the reality is far more uncomfortable: these laws are not indigenous expressions of Senegalese identity but direct inheritances from French colonial rule. Their persistence represents a paradox in which a nation that proudly celebrates its independence continues to enforce the moral architecture of the very empire it resisted. To understand the severity of the current climate, marked by arrests, public harassment, and political posturing, it is essential to confront how colonialism created the legal foundations for homophobia in Senegal and how those structures have been repurposed to serve modern political needs.

Before French colonisation, Senegal, like many West African societies, had diverse, context‑specific norms around gender roles, same‑sex intimacy, and social identity. These norms were not uniform or idealised, but they were not governed by criminal prohibitions imported from European penal codes. French administrators arrived with a view of sexuality shaped by 19th‑century European anxieties, Catholic morality, and a paternalistic belief that African societies needed to be “civilised.” In doing so, they introduced legal categories that treated same‑sex intimacy as deviance and crime, embedding surveillance and punishment into the colonial state. The French Code Pénal, applied across West Africa, imposed legal sanctions on sexual behaviour the colonisers found objectionable—not because such acts posed a threat to social order, but because they offended European sensibilities.

This is the origin of Article 319.3 of Senegal’s criminal code, a provision that punishes “unnatural acts” between adults. After independence in 1960, Senegal retained much of the French legal framework, including this provision, an ironic twist given that French law itself decriminalised same‑sex relationships decades ago. France has discarded the very legal doctrine that Senegal still uses to justify surveillance, arrests, and public humiliation of queer citizens.

Yet to treat this as a simple oversight would be naïve. Over the decades, the colonial legal residue has been woven into nationalist narratives. Senegalese politicians often claim that homosexuality is a threat to cultural authenticity, a Western import, a foreign “agenda,” or a corruption of local values. This inversion of historical truth is striking: the criminalisation of homosexuality is Western; the policing of sexual minorities is Western; the moral panic framing queerness as a political threat is Western. What is being defended in the name of tradition is, in fact, a colonial artifact.

The consequences of this historical amnesia are visible today in the intensifying hostility toward LGBT people in Senegal. High‑profile arrests, sensationalist media coverage, and rhetoric from religious leaders have created an atmosphere where queer Senegalese are treated as scapegoats for broader social anxieties. Economic hardship, youth unemployment, and political fragmentation find convenient diversion in moral outrage.

Politicians leverage anti‑LGBT sentiment to strengthen their populist credentials, presenting themselves as protectors of morality while obscuring their own governance failures.

This tactic is not unique to Senegal—colonial laws across Africa have been revived and weaponised by postcolonial leaders eager to cultivate political legitimacy. But in Senegal, the contradiction is particularly stark because the country’s self‑image is built on a reputation for stability, intellectual rigour, and cultural openness. It is a nation that champions artistic expression, dialogue, and pluralism. Yet for queer Senegalese, this openness ends where their identities begin.

The colonial legacy has not only shaped the legal terrain; it has reshaped public consciousness. Generations have grown up under laws that frame homosexuality as criminal, immoral, or pathological. The legal system teaches society how to think: criminalisation creates stigma, stigma reinforces criminalisation, and the cycle becomes self‑justifying. This is how a foreign legal import transforms into an apparent cultural principle. It becomes difficult to imagine that the law itself is the intruder, and queer citizens the ones unjustly cast as outsiders.

The use of these colonial laws reinforces a deeper pattern of internalised colonial power. Independence movements across Africa sought not only political liberation but cultural restoration. Yet many postcolonial states replicated colonial control mechanisms, maintaining the repressive legal categories they inherited. Senegal’s anti‑LGBT laws exemplify this paradox. The desire to assert sovereignty has fused with the colonial legal apparatus in a way that harms the very people these nations seek to protect. The result is a form of recolonisation: the state wields laws designed for domination against its own citizens.

Some defenders of the current laws argue that Senegal is a predominantly Muslim nation and that its legal approach reflects religious values rather than colonial remnants, but this argument collapses upon closer examination. Islamic jurisprudence across regions and historical periods has displayed a range of attitudes toward gender and sexuality, far more nuanced than the blunt criminal prohibitions inherited from Europe. The codification of anti‑LGBT laws in Senegal came not from Islamic scholarship but from French bureaucrats. To conflate colonial statutes with religious doctrine is to misunderstand both.

The persistence of these laws has severe consequences. Beyond the immediate legal penalties, they legitimise violence, harassment, and social exclusion. Queer Senegalese face extortion, assault, and forced evictions. Many live in secrecy, fear, and isolation as those seen to be helping them are also being prosecuted. Some flee to other countries where they hope to find safety, only to encounter xenophobia and bureaucratic barriers. The law may seem symbolic to some, but to those affected, it defines the boundaries of possibility, who they can trust, where they can live, how they can work, and whether they can exist openly at all.

A postcolonial nation should not be governed by colonial ghosts. Dismantling these laws is not an act of capitulation to Western liberalism; it is a declaration of historical clarity. It would mean acknowledging that the legal suppression of queer identities is not a Senegalese tradition but a colonial imposition that has survived too long. It would mean reclaiming cultural autonomy from the structures designed to deny it.

It would mean recognising that queer Senegalese are not foreign intruders but members of the nation whose dignity is entitled to protection.

Repealing Article 319.3 would not instantly eliminate homophobia, nor would it resolve the tensions between religious conservatism, cultural norms, and modern human rights frameworks. It would, however, strip political actors of a colonial tool they have long used to police identity and consolidate power. It would send a message that Senegal’s legal system serves its people—not the remnants of an empire that once sought to discipline them.

Senegal stands at a crossroads where it must choose between perpetuating colonial legal violence and embracing a vision of independence that includes all its citizens. Anti‑LGBT laws do not safeguard the nation’s values; they betray them. True sovereignty requires the courage to confront inherited injustice, especially when it masquerades as tradition.

Dr Jamil F. Khan is an award-winning author, doctoral critical diversity scholar, and research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.