According to a recent study, South Africa has been deemed the most LGBTQ+ friendly country in all of Africa.
LGBTQ+ travellers welcomed in South Africa
As Pride month comes to close, South Africa can take ‘pride’ in knowing that it is considered the best country for LGBTQ+ travellers in Africa. Asher & Lyric, a family and travel journalism blog, recently created a Travel Safety Index which ranked 203 countries with available data, and then carefully examined the LGBTQ+ rights for each of these countries.
According to tourism update, the index is based on ten ranking factors, each referring to the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people.
These factors included whether same-sex marriage was legalised, worker protections, protections against discrimination, criminalisation of violence, adoption recognition, whether it was a good place to live, transgender legal identity laws, trans murder rates, punishments for same-sex relationships, and propaganda/morality laws.
After this research was conducted, South Africa was ranked the safest country in Africa for LGBTQ+ travellers, with an award of a B grade. This grade also placed South Africa as the 21st safest country in the world on the list.
Top of the list for safety and LGBTQ+ rights and experiences were Canada in first place, Sweden in second, the Netherlands in third, and Malta and Portugal in fourth and fifth respectively.
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Several African countries didn’t fare as well…
While South Africa did indeed take the top spot, several African countries were unfortunately give F grades. Some of these countries included:
- Nigeria,
- Democratic Republic of the Congo,
- Ghana,
- Rwanda,
- Liberia,
- Burundi,
- Eswatini,
- the Central African Republic,
- Zimbabwe and many more.
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