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Premier League club Sunderland says it no longer expects its proposed 'Visit Ghana' shirt sponsorship to go ahead. The club blamed a lack of government approval, not human rights, but LGBTQ+ advocates had warned that the deal would market a country moving to jail queer visitors.
Archbishop Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith, the Anglican Primate of West Africa, spent years backing Ghana's push to criminalize LGBTQ+ people. In a BBC interview last week, he said the church doesn't support it — a shift that won't undo the law, but complicates the religious cover it's relied on.
Ghana's parliament adjourned for recess without voting on a plan to toughen sentencing in the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, leaving the already-passed version sitting on President Mahama's desk unchanged.
Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Senegal have each moved to criminalize or further punish LGBTQ+ people in 2026. Rights groups say the timing and language are too similar to be coincidence.
On May 29 Ghana's parliament approved the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill — the legislation that makes it a crime to be LGBTQ+. President Mahama, who has said publicly he will sign it, now holds the only remaining check.
Ghana's parliamentary committee held two days of public hearings on April 23 and 24 on the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill — the legislation that would criminalize LGBTQ+ identity itself. Here's the state of play, with President Mahama now publicly ambivalent.
From Senegal's doubled penalties to Ghana's revived criminalization bill, a worsening climate for LGBTQ+ Africans has deep roots in US evangelical influence — now turbocharged by the Trump administration.
Ghana's parliament is advancing the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, which would make it a crime to identify as LGBTQ+, to advocate for equal rights, or to attend a same-sex wedding. President Mahama has said he'll sign it.
