Kenyan LGBTIQ and sex work activist, author and journalist
Denis Nzioka is a Kenyan sexual and gender minority activist-author with a particular focus on LGBTIQ and sex workers' communities in Kenya and Africa. He has been instrumental in the formation of several organisations focused on queer and sex workers' rights while supporting regional organising around sexual diversity, bodily autonomy, and choice-expression.
Life and work.
Nzioka ran albeit covertly, a safe house for LGBTQ persons in 2009. At the same time, he was the first Kenyan to publicly come out on national TV. Since then, his articles and blogs have been published by various media outlets globally. He has also made regular TV and radio appearances.
He founded the Denis Nzioka News Agency and Service in 2010 as a media agency and service for the LGBTQI, sex work and allied community in Kenya. The Agency works to transform public opinion and social attitudes through grassroots reporting and community commentary. The Agency provides advocacy and resource materials.
Nzioka was a 2013 Kenyan Presidential aspirant. He started an LGBTI and sex work magazine in Kenya, "Identity Kenya", as well as an LGBTIQ news app on the Google Play Store. He co-edited Gay Kenya's book "My Way, Your Way or the Rights Way" and published in 2019 an anthology book of Kenyan allies speaking out for LGBTIQ rights titled "Rafiki Zetu". In 2020, he launched the Gay and Lesbian Archives of Kenya, dubbed KumbuKumbu, an open, online, and free repository for records documenting the history and culture of the LGBTQI movement in Kenya from mid-1800 to the present.
Currently, he is undertaking a self-sponsored research project "Waiter, umenyonga ugali: LGBTI rights and Human Rights". He attempts to answer the question, "Are LGBTIQ rights part of the Kenya civil society menu?" He hopes to investigate how—if at all—civil society organisations in Kenya are integrating the rights of sexual and gender minorities in their advocacy strategies and social change programs.
Awards.
Nzioka was named one of the World's Top 10 Tweeters on Sexuality and Development. He received the 2016 Sauti Award for "balanced reporting of sex work issues," and to celebrate their 10th anniversary, the South Africa Feathers Awards named him as its 2018 Africa honouree. He received the Munir Mazrui Lifetime Achievement Award from the Defenders Coalition and the Best EA Activist Award in the Tanzania Activist Awards.
References.
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