Women from 14 African countries gathered in Namibia's capital Windhoek in the last week of August 2004 to develop the African Lesbian Alliance, which was renamed the Coalition of African Lesbians at the meeting. Hosted by the rainbow project together with Sister Namibia, 25 representatives of lesbian organisations and a number of individual women from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique and Namibia spent a fruitful week developing the vision, objectives and structure of the organisation.

The African Lesbian Alliance was founded last year by women from seven Southern African countries, who met in Johannesburg for a research project on lesbian lives that was organised by the Gay and Lesbian Archives (GALA) based at the University of Witwatersrand. They presented their findings at the Sex and Secrecy Conference of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society held in June 2003. Together they envisioned getting to know and networking with African lesbians across the...