ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the dimensions of the assumed links between money and sexual minority identities and politics in West Africa. The region is an interesting place in which to parse discursive associations, given its varied colonial past and recent North American and Western European efforts to intervene in African sexual and gender minority health and rights. Local non-governmental organization with the ideological and financial backing of Western institutions are easily framed as tied to foreign influence and Western hegemony assumed to be intent on imposing cultural practices and beliefs that are antithetical to “African values.” The chapter focuses on existing research on gender and sexual diversity politics in West Africa to explore the discursive and material relationships between money, sexual minority identities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer organizing efforts in the region. In addition to offering a critical synthesis of the ethnographic literature focusing on the association of sexual diversity and money in West Africa.
