This is the Guardian.

Today, how the West African state of Ghana became a testing ground

for some of the harshest anti-Gay laws in the world.

The Guardian's West African Correspondent, Emmanuel Akinwoto,

the key to understanding this story is an event in Ghana's capital city, back at the start of 2021.

A group called the LGBT rights plus Ghana inaugurated a community centre in Accra,

that was meant to be a safe space and physical place of community for LGBTQ plus people in Ghana.

We already had a very strong online presence and one of our strategy was to also create a physical

presence, a space where we can be able to mobilise and organise ourselves easily.

Alex Kofi Donkour is a Ghanaian gay rights activist and he was there that day,

along with many in Ghana's LGBTQ plus community, and he invited foreign dignitaries to come to

from Australia and the EU. Many of the people at the centre are sorry as really kind of a landmark moment.

I'm very happy today to even be in a space like this. I didn't think it would ever happen

that the LGBTQ people in Ghana would have a space to themselves that we can come here and feel like

we belong. It was a day of joy, it was a day of incredible happiness and it was a day of a fulfilment

of a dream that we've got for all this number of years and also been working towards it.

Even just the fact that I can order an Uber and put in LGBT rights and it would pop up,

it was very big for me today so I'm excited, I'm happy.

It was a moment of celebration, a public display of pride and confidence from a new generation of

gay and queer Ghanaians. They tend to be younger, more social media savvy and upset at the way

gay advocacy has been in Ghana. They are a lot more explicit and the community space is an example

of that. They declare that it's a community space for gay and queer people and they felt that a more

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