Sometimes the beauty is in the data.

I'd be curious to see the changes. Nigeria got worse, but did the rest of the countries? Even this one has a lot where the majority are still homophobic, despite the decline.

Christianity

My guess is the billions that the US has spent to export evangelical bigotry in Africa.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert, but more familiar than most westerners.

Nigeria has a particularly rough history of religious extremism and totalitarianism. Even a lot of the indigenous beliefs were particularly intolerant (although this varied a lot, as Nigeria is an extremely diverse nation). These beliefs are rare nowadays, but still influence the culture and superstition. Adding to this, you have the influence of two abrahamic religions - in the north is a significant Islamic population, and in the south, Christianity largely imported (and enforced) by the British. I can't speak for the Islamic beleifs, but as was the case in many other places, the Christian beliefs imported and enforced were generally more conservative and extreme, and less allowed to change.

As well as this, the brutality of both regional warlords, colonization, then multiple different military dictatorships that followed, and now an ineffective government where terrorism and organized crime are common, lead many people to become more religious. Even now with a (relatively) stable and calm government, churchs and mosks are still one of the only sources for social assistance and security in communities. At the same time, the central positon of these churches leads to them being very corrupt and greedy, often being run more like a cult than a church as we tend to think of one. At the same time, in the modern world, this greed mean they also take in a lot of money from influential "Christian" organizations, for example, a lot of very rich, very political Anerican mega-churches, and will happily bend their teachings to appease wealthy donors.

All of this has led to Nigeria being effectively a perfect storm for homophobia and religious discrimination despite being (relatively) free.

Given the statistics, even gays are homophobes there

Unfortunately every country has their low-water-mark percentage of irredeemable bigots. Thankfully most of them tend to live out in the middle of nowhere, away from civilised people.

it's common sense that homosexuality is acceptable when it's between two hot women /s

Hey I'm not saying if has anything to do with the fact that manga publishers started printing futanari stories more openly in the mid 80's...

But I'm also not not saying it's related...

It's a really good question, I'm from Argentina and I don't have a solid answer. Like someone else said the colonization and history is likely to be part of the reason, but I would like to remark that Argentina has a lot more influence from Italy, Spain, Germany and France, and also Jewish ( iirc Buenos Aires used to be the city with the largest jewish population after New York in the 90's). It's a very different cultural melting pot compared to any other country in South America.

AFAIK the government is the issue there, not cultural attitudes. Their politicians don't use it as a weapon, but I could be wrong.

There are abo 25% of countries in there and it doesn't look like doctored data and agrees with lived experience. Your claims are baseless.

I'm not quite sure how these countries were selected, but the set does touch on many regions and the very biggest ones.

What claim exactly? Its say around the world and lists countries that span the globe. Seems accurate. Plus it represents the majority of the population.