Rafiki is a tender love story set in urban Kenya. It follows two teenage girls whose close friendship slowly blossoms into first love. Directed by Wanuri Kahiu, the film was widely celebrated at festivals when it premiered in 2018. At home, however, it was banned. In Kenya, where homosexuality remains criminalised, Rafiki was deemed unfit for public viewing.
On January 23, 2026, after a long legal battle led by Kahiu, Kenya’s Court of Appeal overturned that ban, allowing the film to be screened publicly. The decision is significant not just for the film, but for what it signals about censorship, audiences and the future of African cinema.
When Kenya’s Film Classification Board banned Rafiki in 2018, it argued that the film’s hopeful ending amounted to “promoting homosexuality”. The ban quickly came to symbolise the barriers filmmakers face when challenging dominant ideas about sex, gender and morality. That an internationally acclaimed Kenyan film could screen at Cannes but not in Nairobi exposed a deep contradiction in how national cinema was regulated.
The unbanning does not mean Kenya has liberalised its laws. Same-sex relationships remain illegal, and restrictions on queer lives are firmly in place. Other queer-themed Kenyan films, such as I Am Samuel, are still banned. Yet Rafiki’s return marks the first time a Kenyan film prohibited for queer content has been permitted full public circulation. That alone makes it a landmark moment.
African film industries have long operated under strict moral, religious and political controls. From colonial-era censorship boards to postcolonial classification authorities, cinema has been treated as something requiring constant surveillance.
Queer sexuality has been among the most heavily policed subjects. Films exploring same-sex desire have often been banned outright, confined to festival circuits or pushed underground. South Africa’s Inxeba/The Wound and Nigeria’s Ìfé faced similar restrictions.
Against this backdrop, Rafiki’s unbanning disrupts entrenched assumptions about what African films can show and who they can centre. It suggests that national cinemas cannot indefinitely insulate themselves from transnational cultural currents. African queer films are increasingly visible and valued abroad, and that global attention appears to be reshaping what is negotiable at home.
One of the most important implications concerns audiences. Censorship not only suppresses content; it also defines who is imagined as the viewer. For decades, queer African films have been implicitly addressed to foreign audiences rather than local publics.
Allowing Rafiki to screen in Kenya challenges this logic. It opens space — however fragile — for Kenyan audiences to encounter queer lives as intimate, everyday stories rather than abstract controversies.
This matters because representation is not only about visibility. It is also about producing audiences and forms of recognition. Films like Rafiki help create new viewing communities and suggest that African audiences are not monolithic or uniformly hostile to queer narratives.
Streaming platforms and digital circulation have already been changing these publics, even as cinema spaces shrink.
For filmmakers, the ruling carries both practical and symbolic weight. It signals that classification regimes may be challenged and that legal pressure can yield results.
The decision sets a precedent, offering cautious encouragement to directors willing to take creative risks. It suggests that queer storytelling need not be permanently excluded from national cinema.
The unbanning should not be overstated. Censorship persists, backlash is likely, and legal prohibitions remain.
But cultural openings often precede social and legal change. Rafiki’s return represents a possibility: that African films can speak more openly about intimacy and difference, and that African audiences can meet these stories on their own terms.
The Conversation