Lagos - Nigeria - October, 2010

Originally planned for early 2010, the African Regional Dialogue on Sexuality and Geopolitics took place from October 4th to 6th, 2010 in Lagos, Nigeria.

The regional task force – Adenike Esiet (Action Health Nigeria), Codou Bop (GREFFELS, Senegal), Dorothy Aken’Ova (INCRESE, Nigeria) and Sylvia Tamale (Law School, Makerere University Uganda) – met in Nigeria to plan for the Dialogue and finalize the Dialogue agenda. Themes to be discussed include strategies to effective alliance between activism bodies and States, and also strategies to address themes like religion and culture when addressing sexuality and sexual politics in Africa; issues related to sexual citizenship, sexual identity, orientation and expression, gender identity, desires and pleasures; sexuality in the different life cycles, such as adolescence and elder ages; sexuality issues related to HIV/Aids, rape, survivals of sexual violence, exposure to HIV prophylaxis. One of the sessions looked at emerging issues related to sexuality and HIV, especially within the African continent.

The African Regional Dialogue on Sexuality and Geopolitics included participants from various African sub-regions and represented the experiences and concerns of a wide range of constituencies: feminist researchers and advocates, LGBT rights advocates and sexuality researchers, and communities engaged with HIV/AIDS-related investigation, policy and advocacy.

The goals of the meeting, as defined by the regional task force, were:

• To enhance conceptual clarity on issues of sexuality and the linkages between theory and practice (creativity, strategies, resistance, and subversion);
• To map out and analyze sexual citizenship in Africa, including eroticism and pleasure;
• To examine linkages between governance, underdevelopment, and sexual and reproductive rights;
• To increase visibility and enlarge the space for the voices of sexual minorities; and
• To disseminate the results of the Dialogue widely – both within the region and beyond it.