In pre-colonial Africa, men who had sexual relationship with older men almost always married a woman later in life and had children. Exclusive homosexuality would not have been and is still not a viable option for Africans who value wealth and patronymic extension through marriage.

Some colonies were even reputed as being paradises of homosexual debauchery. Indeed, in French, faire passer son brevet colonial, that is, to take one's colonial certificate, mean initiating a young recruit to sodomy, that is, intercourse ,i> per anum during which the noviciate would play the role of the insertee.

Expressions to designate homosexuality exist in some fifty (Sub-Saharan) African languages - gor-jigeen in Wolof, ngochani in Shona, Hasini in Nandi, 'yan daudu in Hausa, mashoga ("passive" homosexual), mabasha ("virile" partner) in Kiswahili. [They refer] to ancestral practices in "traditional", that is pre-industrial, societies [...].

Stonewall" has come to mark the origins of gay political activism although earlier groups in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the French movement that grew out of the May 1968 events cannot be ignored.

Out in Africa examines the anthropological, cultural and literary representations of male and female same sex desire, as it is at odds with an apparent context of heteronormativity and emphasis on reproduction, in a pan-African context, from the nineteenth century to the present.

African "homosexualities" can never be comfortably slotted within identity politics carved out of Western "gay" and "lesbian" liberation struggles, and display queer and even post-queer characteristics.

In South Africa, "some women identify as gay rather than lesbian" and a "masculine man" playing the dominant role in a relationship with another man, for instance, is called "a straight man" and is not perceived as "gay" because he act as penetrator during sexual intercourse. This holds true to some extent in North Africa and in the Middle East.

[Mark] Epprecht's larger thesis [...] is that Europeans introduced homophobia, not homosexuality, to Africa.

As is often the case, an individual who has been racially oppressed may be blind that the same mechanisms of exclusion and denigration are at work in gender oppression.

The African continent has always been more queer than generally acknowledged.