Kenya: LGBTQ+ Community Still Here, Still Queer Despite Cuts

Nairobi — LGBTQ+ organizations in Kenya are struggling: Deep funding cuts, not just during Pride, have forced layoffs, shrinking services and tough choices. But organizations that serve queer communities are adapting.

John Mathenge, director of Health Options for Young Men on HIV/AIDS/STIs (HOYMAS), told DW that the organization runs three facilities in Nairobi (the Kenyan capital), Kajiado (Rift Valley) and Nyeri (Central Kenya).

These centers serve LGBTQ+ people and other key populations, including men who have sex with men (MSM), sex workers, people who inject drugs and transgender individuals. "Pride means a lot to all of us as LGBTI persons in Kenya and globally, and Pride month is a month that we should always be proud of ourselves, but so far we are not because of the funding cuts from USAID," Mathenge said.

"You can imagine, in Nairobi, we had almost 25 staff and 110 volunteers, and we had to lay them off, all of them," he said. Mathenge estimates HOYMAS lost more than half of its funding. "We [are] actually currently working on a small budget. I think we lost almost like 60% of the funding that we used to get from different partners," he said.

Mathenge says maintaining services has required difficult compromises but stressed that limited support from Kenya's Social Health Authority has helped.

"The small money we get for primary health care is what we pay our clinicians, like three volunteers, to make sure that the small, small money we also procure some drugs," Mathenge said.

Still, outreach, healthcare worker training, violence reporting and peer educator programs have been severely reduced.

"Actually, it affected me mentally, seeing that communities, the peer-educated volunteers, cannot even access even the small, small funding that they used to get, some of our staff are now on the streets," he said.

Unlike some groups that scaled back or shut down, HOYMAS decided to keep operating.

"The facilities are still open. We haven't closed any facilities, and we tried to do our resource mobilization from individual philanthropies in Kenya to make sure that our community can access services," Mathenge added.

For Kevin, a university student in Nairobi, the impact was immediate. "In the past, I relied on community organizations for counseling sessions, health information and access to condoms. Since funding cuts began affecting some programs, those services have become less frequent and sometimes harder to access," he told DW.

"There have been periods when supplies ran low, forcing people to look elsewhere or go without resources they had pr