George Kanuma is an activist who works for the National Association of HIV positive and AIDS patients. In this video (at the AIDS 2008 conference), he explains the state of tolerance of the gay community in French-speaking Africa.
On monday, BBC NEWS covered a story on the alarming rate of HIV amongst gay men in Africa. According to the article, HIV rates among gay men in some African countries are 10 times higher than among the general male population. The rate is attributed to the intense prejudice towards gay people which leads to “isolation and harassment, which in turn leads to risky sexual practices in gay communities.”
Although there is a lot being done in African countries for HIV/AIDS prevention, it would seem that education is still needed when it comes to gay men because they are seen as an invisible part of society. Kanuma states:
“Most of them know that you can contract HIV/Aids or any infection when you are making sex with women, but not when you are having sex with another man…”
Kanuma, a gay rights activist in Burundi, also told the BBC that many men “hide their sexual orientation” to get married and have children, but continue to have sex with men. The United Nations Aids agency estimates that 33 million people in the world have HIV, of whom two-thirds live in sub-Saharan Africa.
