{"id":21681,"date":"2026-01-13T22:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T22:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/21681\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T22:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T22:42:08","slug":"queer-motherland-offers-resources-to-dallas-lgbtq-africans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/21681\/","title":{"rendered":"Queer Motherland Offers Resources to Dallas LGBTQ Africans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olive Okoro has always questioned everything. Like much of Gen Z, she was raised on the internet as a child of the Tumblr era. Similarly, like many Nigerians, she was also raised in church. Despite her religious upbringing, her queerness was never a question<\/a> for her.\u00a0At the age of 8, she\u2019d already found a home in a digital world where queerness was celebrated. To her, homophobia was bizarre.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For some, a journey toward self-acceptance is wrought with a desire to adhere to social norms, but Okoro has never cared much for convention. She says her irreverence for the status quo might be due to her upbringing. While some families adopt a patriarchal structure, Okoro\u2019s mother was the breadwinner. Being raised in a family with mostly women, and being feminine presenting herself, meant that no one ever seemed to consider that Okoro might be queer. Regardless, her coming out was met with curiosity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy family is so deeply matriarchal,\u201d Okoro says. \u201cIt\u2019s not so \u2018traditional\u2019 that I feel constrained. When I started doing more queer stuff online and more advocacy work, my parents just told me to be safe.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As immigrants, Okoro\u2019s family prioritized working to build a prosperous life. They didn\u2019t have time to fret over who she was dating. Okoro laughs as she recalls on the conversation. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018OK, you want to date a woman. Are you gonna be rich? Are you still going to school,\u2019\u201d she remembers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"oliveQueer Motherland founder Olive Okoro introduces the organization\u2019s first Queersgiving event at Pan-African Connection.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, in her junior year of college, Okoro decided she would be rich. She\u2019s always been a social media person; when she started making TikToks in 2022, she quickly built a following discussing anything from human rights to financial literacy. Now she has over 600k followers across all her social media accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Okoro has used her TikTok platform to land brand deals, book jobs and speak at conferences. This year, she was invited to speak at a nonprofit conference about liberation for the LGBTQ+ community. She chose to speak about queer Africans, and her months of research for the topic led her to create her own organization, Queer Motherland<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When launching her organization, Okoro leveraged her social media platforms to build an international team. Queer Motherland has board members in Ghana, Houston, Chicago and Dallas. It formally launched in March of last year and has since amassed more than 14,000 followers on Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s just spiraled,\u201d Okoro says. \u201cBet on yourself a little bit, and you\u2019ll be surprised.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advocacy has always been important to Okoro. One of her primary goals for the organization is to dispel the myth that Africans can\u2019t be queer.\u00a0The organization is founded on the African philosophy of Ubuntu: \u201cI am because we are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cQueer Africans have always existed,\u201d Okoro said. \u201cThere are always gonna be queer Africans, because Africa is the foundation of humanity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Okoro says generalizing all Africans by monolithic notions is a disservice to the diversity that lives throughout the continent. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people think of Africa as a monolith,\u201d Okoro says. \u201cThere are different countries, and tribes upon tribes with different languages and different traditions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Walking Away From Shame<\/p>\n

Zewd Adeb, who uses they\/them pronouns, began to reckon with their identity after moving from Ethiopia to the United States. Leaving home at 18 granted them the space to deconstruct their long-held belief system. Although they were deeply involved in their Lutheran church in Ethiopia, they always harbored doubts and nagging questions. In their community, queerness was publicly demonized, forcing them to swallow their questions in fear of shame.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After hearing similar messaging in American churches, Adeb walked away from the church altogether. Releasing their shame allowed them to embrace their identity. They initially came out as bisexual and non-binary before ultimately coming out as transgender.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the height of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Adeb learned what it meant to be Black in America and considered how their Black and queer identities intersect.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, as a newly licensed therapist, Adeb was seeking resources to create mental health programs for queer Africans. Then they found Okoro\u2019s TikTok. Now, Adeb serves on Queer Motherland\u2019s board by organizing events and coordinating mental health and immigration programming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to create a community for people to process some of the hardships of experiencing the intersectionality of being queer and African,\u201d Adeb says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of isolation and a lot of harm people are experiencing today. We\u2019re trying to find programs that could link them to immigration resources and provide mental health resources through different languages.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delving deeper into queer African history helped Adeb realize that homophobia in Africa is not traditional; it\u2019s a colonial construct.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Adeb was in seventh grade, former President Barack Obama visited Ethiopia. They remember chaos erupting as people wagged their fists about Obama \u201cbringing queerness to the country.\u201d But\u00a0Adeb insists that queerness has always been there. They referenced the Maale people\u2019s broad gender expression. In southern Ethiopia, the Maale people have a term called \u201cashtime.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn modern day, we would describe them as non-binary, or trans \u2014 specifically trans women,\u201d Adeb says. \u201cThis group was perceived as closer to God. They were spiritually pure, so they were the only ones who were able to go into the high courts. Historically, Africa is the birthplace of queerness. There\u2019s so much queer culture in every single country, but that part of history gets erased, it gets hidden, it gets whitewashed. So there\u2019s this belief \u2014 even amongst Africans \u2014 that queerness is a Western import.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Gathering Place<\/p>\n

Queer Motherland is working to illuminate similarly hidden aspects of African history. The group regularly posts informative content across social media, shares posts celebrating African queerness and plans events for the community. Recently, about 30 people convened at Pan-African Connection<\/a> with plates of jollof rice, a traditional West African dish, in celebration of Queer Motherland\u2019s first Queersgiving event.<\/p>\n

Hosted in collaboration with Dallas Black Queer Collective, Queersgiving offered Dallas\u2019 Black queer community a space to gather and celebrate chosen family. Attendees participated in queer trivia, engaged in discussion about Queer Motherland\u2019s chosen book of the month and deliberated about the experience of being both Black and queer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Late last month, the organization hosted its first digitally global event, Queer African Vision Board Circle, to plan for the new year. Eventually, Okoro aims to establish Queer Motherland chapters worldwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goals center around our three pillars: education, advocacy and community,\u201d Okoro tells us. \u201cI want to build more chapters across the U.S. and in different parts of Africa and make sure we\u2019re having events every single month. We also want to make a Queer Motherland Scholarship fund. I know a lot of queer people in African and Black families can be ostracized from their homes, and I want people to be able to continue their education.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Queer Motherland also plans to partner with more African organizations doing advocacy work on the ground.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSouth Africa has the biggest queer African conference in the world,\u201d Okoro says. \u201cI want to partner with them, maybe be a vendor at their event next year, and make sure that we are actually advocating for the people in Africa so their voices are heard as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Adeb, joining Queer Motherland has given them the opportunity to understand that, much like the African community, the queer community is vibrantly diverse. This has allowed Adeb a lifeline for their own identity and has connected them with others from Ethiopia who have reached out to discuss their own personal journeys.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAccess is so important,\u201d Adeb says. \u201cThere is so much fear for people \u2014 specifically in African countries, to access this kind of space. To see representation of someone that looks exactly like them, living the lives that they could live, shows them it\u2019s possible. We\u2019re here, we\u2019re queer and we\u2019re gonna be there for them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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