A wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is gathering pace across Africa, driven by political opportunism and rising anti-Western sentiment, and fuelled by US far-right groups. Several African countries – most recently Senegal – have introduced or intensified anti-LGBTQ+ laws.

What’s the background?
In 2023, the first African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty was hosted by Uganda. Many argue this forum has “influenced anti-LGBTQ+ laws” across Africa, said The Guardian. Later that year, Uganda introduced “one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ laws”, said Africa News with Agence France-Presse. It imposes life imprisonment for same-sex intercourse, and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”, which includes same-sex intercourse with minors or while HIV-positive. Uganda “set the tone”, and other countries “followed suit”.

Since then, three neighbouring former French colonies – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – have all tightened restrictions on same-sex relations. Today, 33 of Africa’s 54 countries criminalise LGBTQ+ people “in some form”, said the Human Dignity Trust: more than any other continental region.

What’s the latest?
Senegal has passed a new law to increase jail terms and penalties for “acts against nature”. Dismissing international criticism, the government said the legislation “reflected the views of Senegalese people”. Last week, 71 men were arrested and charged with “unnatural acts”. 

In June, Ghana’s parliament voted to pass “one ‌of Africa’s most draconian anti-LGBTQ bills”, said openDemocracy. Same-sex relations were already criminalised but this bill proposes prison terms for “promoting” them. If signed into law, it would make identifying as LGBTQ+ “punishable by up to three years in prison”.

What’s driving the shift?
The stricter laws are being “encouraged by conservative figures” in the US and Europe, said Reuters. LGBTQ+ people are “scapegoats”, one activist told Africa News, used to “deflect attention from thorny subjects” or rising discontent. The shift is also linked to rising anti-Western sentiment across former colonies, particularly where military juntas have seized power. “Proponents of so-called African ‘family values’ have long portrayed the issue as a religious and moral concern,” said openDemocracy. But now they are “increasingly recasting it as part of Africa’s fight against neo-colonialism”.

Hundreds of thousands of sixth-formers got their A-level results today but those who plan to continue into higher education face a “ticking timebomb” of higher taxes and debt, said The Guardian. 

Highest burden
The cost of paying for a university education has been shifted almost entirely onto current students, said researchers at the Intergenerational Foundation. The latest student loan package, Plan 5, means young graduates will struggle to save for house deposits or pension contributions, delaying key financial milestones. 

The amounts being repaid by today’s graduates in England are more than double those paid under Plan 1, which was in place before 2012, when annual undergraduate tuition fees rose from £3,375 to £9,000. However, Plan 5 does have a lower interest rate than Plan 1, and its subsequent iterations.

The “burden of student loans has never been higher”, said the Intergenerational Foundation’s Toby Whelton. “By stealth” and with “minimal democratic scrutiny”, successive governments have “piled costs” onto young graduates and hoped that “nobody would notice”.

Perfect storm
Younger generations in the UK already face unique challenges. A perfect storm of economic factors means they have a much harder path to home ownership than previous generations. House deposits have also become harder to build: where previous generations might have only had to set aside a few months of spare salary, would-be buyers may now need years of gross earnings. In May, Barratt Redrow, Britain’s largest housebuilder, said a combination of rising interest rates, higher levels of student debt and the squeeze on wages was making it the most challenging time to be a first-time buyer since the financial crisis. The “dream of home ownership” is moving “increasingly out of reach for many young people”, said The Guardian.

Andy Burnham said in July that he’s considering giving billions of pounds in tax relief to young people so they can save for a house deposit. “This is going to be a major offer to young people” to help them bridge the generational wealth gap, one Labour MP told The Independent.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage smiles after casting his vote in the Clacton by-election. Polls opened in the East of England constituency today after Farage resigned his seat and ran for election again. With no mainstream parties putting up a candidate, his main rival is Count Binface.

Henry Nicholls / AFP / Getty Images

It’s usually The British Museum and the Natural History Museum that steal the educational-days-out headlines but the UK has many more eclectic collections to admire. Here are some of our favourite museum oddities across the country.

The Crab Museum, Kent
This Margate museum bills itself as “Europe’s first and only museum dedicated to the decapod”. It’s also one of the UK’s “most bizarre institutions”, said Amy Houghton in Time Out. Founded in 2021, the space is “crammed with crab trivia” and “hilarious tongue-in-cheek information panels”. 

The Morbitorium, Wales
This little museum certainly makes for a “peculiar day out”, said Lizzy Reece on Rest Less. Its three rooms are packed with a “huge range of oddities and curiosities”, spanning from “antique lobotomy tools and Ouija boards to mummified cats and Victorian sex toys”. 

British Lawnmower Museum, Southport
“The grass is always greener in Merseyside”, said Etan Smallman in The Telegraph. And, in this museum, lawnmowers are “honoured as the revolutionary gadgets they truly are”. Visitors are guided through the history of a machine that was first patented in 1830 – English engineer Edward Budding tested the prototype at night to avoid the ridicule of his neighbours – and can see a “plethora of Victorian and Edwardian models”.

The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Cornwall
In Boscastle for more than 70 years, this has long been “one of Cornwall’s most popular museums”, said BBC Countryfile. Look out for the “Bellarmine jar found hidden in a house near Plymouth – complete with hair, nail clippings and pins”. 

Why must a socialist also be woke?
Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times
Karl Marx was a “normie”, writes Janan Ganesh. The father of socialism believed “in seizing the means of production without being avant-garde on matters of sex, race, crime or war”. So it’s a “mystery” why today’s “hard left” always “pair a conceivably popular economic programme with a provably hated cultural one”. If they could “decouple socialism” from “woke” ideas, they’d “be difficult to stop”. Instead, capitalism, “forever grateful”, just “glides on”, never having to face “its sternest political test”.

Is Jason Arday a fantasist or a victim of racism? Actually, he’s both
Sangita Myska on The Nerve
I’d like “a suitably erudite” way to describe the resignation of Cambridge University’s youngest Black professor, writes Sangita Myska, but the only phrase “in my mind is: what a shitshow”. Jason Arday’s rise seemed “a tale of triumph over tragedy” but then came “serious questions” about “his backstory” and plagiarism. Some think him “Walter Mitty-esque”; others, a victim of establishment racism. “I believe both takes”: he “clearly” showed “poor personal judgment” but the media coverage has “felt hysterical” and “vicious”.

You have to be a grade-A moron to ride an e-scooter
Stephen Pollard in The Telegraph
Medics say more children are getting seriously injured in e-scooter accidents, writes Stephen Pollard, but, given the kids I see darting “in and out of traffic” on them, “the wonder is that they don’t all get run down”. And “to call these ‘accidents’” is “some sort of Swiftian satire”: the “risk of serious injury” on those things is “almost pre-ordained”. Scooter “implies a kid’s toy” but electric ones are “dangerous vehicles” with “even less stability” than “motorbikes and mopeds”.