The Role of Football and Netball in the Everyday Lives of LGBTQI+ People in Africa

Nearly everyone in the country knows that footballers in women's football teams ‘are just that way’. Football and netball teams seem to be safe spaces for LGBTQI+ people in some African countries.

Julkaistu

8.8.2025

Text: Laura Stark and Vincent Jumbe | Image: Joanna Kędra

In one African country we studied, sports such as football and netball are a safe, or at least safer, spaces for LGBTQI+ people. Women's football is safer for lesbians and transmen, while gay men and transwomen play men’s and women’s netball. This is surprising in a society where same-sex and transgender are denounced loudly from church pulpits, and passersby shout out to LGBTQI+ persons in public that they are ‘satanic’, ‘demonic’ and an ‘abomination’.

Between 2024 and 2025, the players we interviewed reported that between 6-100% of their teammates were LGBTQI+. Nearly everyone in the country seems to know that many of the players are not heterosexual, but they ‘are just that way’, and one can even find cross-dressing entertainers out supporting football on game days.

Story from the field: Experience of playing football as a transgender man

I am a transgender man. I started playing football when I was in primary school. I can say it was a nice experience. Football is a game. As they say, what a man can do, a woman can do better. My parents told me to stop playing soccer. They said I am a woman, and they need grandkids!

When playing soccer, people would point out that I am a girl. How and why am I playing soccer like a boy? Am I indeed a girl, or a boy?

Under the pressure from my parents, I stopped playing soccer. I started wearing girls’ clothes to conform. I got a boyfriend and started having kids! But down the road, I realized I didn’t like it. I decided to go my way, though I am old. My girlfriend lives in another city. I go there often, to be with her. My relationship with her is four years old. Now, I don’t care. I live my life. I don’t beg for food. I fight for what I want. I mind my business.

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