Gay sex is illegal in highly religious and conservative Ghana, but while discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people are common in the West African nation, no one has ever been prosecuted under the colonial-era law.
Celebrated British Actor and Gay Community activist Idris Elba was at Manhyia Palace on Sunday to pay homage to Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and Asantehemaa Nana Konadu Yiadom III at the first Akwasidae of the year 2023.
He led his movie production crew to take shots of the events for his upcoming movie.
It will be recalled in 2021 that the actor together with supermodel Naomi Campbell and co-actor Michaela Coel urged Nana Akufo-Addo to work with LGBTQ community leaders after security forces raided and shut down an LGBTQ centre in the West African country’s capital last week.
They expressed their solidarity with the LGBTQ “family” in an open letter tagged #GhanaSupportsEquality that Monday.
“To our Ghanaian LGBTQIA+ family: We see you and we hear you. We are in awe of your strength, your bravery and your audacity to be true to who you are even when it is dangerous to do so,” the letter reads.
“You are loved, you are important and you deserve a safe place to gather in your shared experience.” the letter stated.
Meanwhile, the 16th Asantehene has warmly welcomed the English actor who doubles as an activist supporting immorality of the African land, LGBTQ (an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and more) in the Manhyia Palace.
However, the English-born actor has revealed that he and his partners have undertaken some groundwork aimed at facilitating the building of a film studio in Ghana and across West Africa when he visited Akufo-Addo in the Jubilee House.
Idrissa Akuna Elba was born on 6 September 1972 in the London Borough of Hackney, to Winston Elba, a Sierra Leonean Creole man who worked at the Ford Dagenham plant, and Eve, a Ghanaian woman. His parents were married in Sierra Leone and later moved to London. Elba was raised in Hackney and East Ham.
Idris Elba in a beautiful kente at the first Akwasidae Festival in 2023. He paid homage to the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, at the Manhyia Palace. The Akwasidae Festival is an Ashanti celebration centred on ancestral reverence and remembrance of past kings & noble feats.
