This contribution departs from a double perspective on the issue of LGBTQI as a ground for ongoing social struggles in Africa. The first of these perspectives is mainly focused on the legal framework of sexual rights and how these bind States and regional organizations to a legal language. The second perspective is one based on ethnographic data, concerning the case of Senegal, where in the last decade there is a mounting intolerance, in the public space, to the subject, and where the refusal to abide by clear anti-discriminatory laws has meant political instrumentalization of the issue. By bringing the concept of sexual citizenship to the fore, as well as the changes in African countries legislation concerning sexual rights, or the growing generalized intolerance around the issue, together, we hope to shed some light on how there have been both advances and setbacks to the experience of citizenship of senegalese LGBTQI people. The LGBTQI issue in Africa is often perceived as an «agenda» by its opponents, imposed from the outside, bearing dubious intentions, and conducting to nefarious effects on the social fabric, while threatening positive African values. This perspective, though, is part of the dynamics of how a social group can, or cannot, access the public space and demand visibility and legitimacy in their experience of citizenship. In our paper, we question critically the concept of sexual citizenship and its limitations in contexts where visibility means a negative exposure. This will show how the formal bond between individuals and the State is not enough to accommodate sexual diversity or how it’s accommodated in public discourse. Sexual Citizenship is a field where citizenship meets activism, development discourse, scholarship and socioreligious resistances, all at the same time. To tackle the complexity of social reactions to LGBTQI, and the narratives it generates, we propose to consider the concept of sexual citizenship both as practice and as a sociolegal construction, one that needs to be evaluated against the backdrop of how the questions of race, class and gender are dealt with locally.

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minority rights,sexual rights,state homophobia,senegal,west africa