For Pride 2024, we’re celebrating African queer activists who are pushing for LGBTQIA rights despite various crackdowns on these liberties on the continent. Meet Cleopatra Kambugu Kentaro, molecular biologist from Uganda.
Cleo is Uganda’s first transgender citizen. In 2021, she received an ID document and passport that bears her preferred gender marker: “F”.
She told openDemocracy that there’s still lots of work to do in Uganda since many trans folks still have to “pass” (as straight) for their protection even though it’s challenging for them to afford and access gender-affirming care.
In 2023, Uganda passed one of the world’s harshest anti-queer laws, which punishes any same-sex sexual acts with life in prison. In 2024, the country’s highest court entrenched his discrimination. It did, however, strike down sections that made it illegal to provide healthcare or housing for LGBTQIA people and which obliged people to report homosexuality, Human Rights Watch reports.
Kambugu’s activism is driven by Ubuntu, meaning ‘I am because you are’, the African philosophy that promotes communality in contrast to the West’s emphasis on individualism – as a decolonised approach to advocating for queer rights in Africa.
She explains that her own transitioning and bodily autonomy also involved a “transitioning of community” – because other people, having seen her transition openly, “now know what a transgender person is”.
Have you seen the award-winning documentary called “The Pearl of Africa”? Cleo is the protagonist of that film. You can also follow her activism through the Trans Support Initiative Uganda and @iamuhai.