Ugandan president calls on Africa to ‘save the world from homosexuality’

Museveni says homosexuality is ‘danger to procreation of human race’ at Entebbe conference hosted by US anti-LGBTQ+ hate group

The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has called on African leaders to reject “the promotion of homosexuality”, suggesting he will sign into law a controversial anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which was passed by parliament last month.

The bill, which imposes the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and life imprisonment for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”, has been widely criticised internationally, with the UN high commissioner for human rights urging the president not to sign it.

Speaking on Sunday, Museveni said homosexuality was “a big threat and danger to the procreation of human race [sic]”.

He said: “Africa should provide the lead to save the world from this degeneration and decadence, which is really very dangerous for humanity. If people of opposite sex [sic] stop appreciating one another then how will the human race be propagated?”

His comments followed a two-day inter-parliamentary conference held at State House in Entebbe on “family values and sovereignty”, attended by MPs and delegates from 22 African countries, including Zambia, Kenya and Sierra Leone.

Museveni praised Ugandan MPs for passing the anti-gay bill and vowed “never to allow the promotion and publicisation of homosexuality in Uganda, stressing that it will never be tolerated”.

A Ugandan LGBTQ+ activist, who asked to remain anonymous for their own safety, attended the conference via Zoom under a pseudonym. “They are drawing up an African strategy to fight homosexuality. They want their government heads to commit to what they called ‘the African position’,” the activist said.

The Uganda government tweeted quotes from a Kenyan MP, George Peter Kaluma, stating that “a person proposing that there should be same-sex marriages or same-sex relationships is a person seeking to wipe out the entire humanity out of the face of this earth [sic]”.

The government also tweeted that Kaluma, who attended the conference, had said many African states were drafting laws similar to the one in Uganda, including Kenya, Ghana and Malawi.