The Pan-African conference on Family Values began in Nairobi on Monday with a call to wage a “biblical” fight for the family unit from Anne Mbugua, chairperson of event organiser the Africa Christian Professionals Forum.
The conference is one of several planned across Africa this year, backed by wealthy US ultra-Christian groups, including Family Watch International, Christian Council International, the Center for Family and Human Rights, and the Family Policy Institute.
Together the groups have spent more than a decade channelling millions of dollars into funding anti-LGBT and anti-abortion narratives in Africa in a bid to spread influence and change laws to align with their conservative values.
“There is nowhere that they have been anywhere in Africa where good has followed,” says women’s rights lawyer and Amnesty International Kenya board member, Tabitha Saoyo. Their presence in Nairobi this week likely means “they will influence law and they will influence policy", she adds.
In a first, they are publicly joined at the conference in Kenya by European counterparts.
Listed as speakers at the event are France’s Ludovine de la Rochère, president of anti-LGBT group La Manif Pour Tous, Poland’s Jerzy Kwasniewski, president of anti-abortion organisation Ordo Iuris, and Margarita de la Pisa Carrion, an MEP for Spain’s far-right Vox party.
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‘An alignment of businesses’
Billed as a networking event for global organisations “committed to shared values”, Kenyan rights activists say the conference is an attempt to impose Western far-right values that endanger women, girls and the LGBT community.
“It's a direct attack on women and girls,” adds Elsy Sainna, associate director of advocacy and external relations for Africa at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Kenya already has national values of dignity, human rights and family values. The conference is a Trojan horse trying to impose a religious perspective on our Constitution.”
Under Kenyan law, there is legal provision for abortion in emergencies or if the life or health of the mother is at risk.
Sex between two people of the same sex is illegal in Kenya. However, advocacy groups point out that it is not illegal to identify as LGBT and cite a 2023 ruling enabling LGBT advocacy organisations to register as NGOs in the country as a significant sign of progress.
When the five-day “family values” conference was first announced promotional materials showed a panel composed entirely of white men, none of whom were from Africa; proof to critics that the event was an attempt to import values that are not part of the Kenyan national debate.
“The protection of family values does not look like what they're trying to force upon us. These are not the concerns of everyday Kenyans,” says Ivy Werimba, communication and advocacy officer at GALCK+, a coalition of Kenyan LGBT organisations. “This event highlights that homophobia is an importation being pushed by Western thought to gain control politically and socially, while putting LGBTQ+ lives at risk.”
Even so, the conference has attracted influential figures from national politics.
Among the attendees in the first few days were Kenyan politicians Joseph Mogosi Motari and Peter Kaluma, who in a speech on Wednesday accused international actors of “recruiting” young Kenyan university graduates and paying them to take up LBGT lifestyles.
His approach typified a narrative that has long been championed by foreign ultra-conservative organisations “that African people do not want queerness or queerness is un-African”, says Werimba. “They are using African bodies and African voices to push this narrative and build credibility.”
Kaluma is currently spearheading a drive to get a Family Protection bill through Kenya’s parliament that would outlaw same-sex relationships, queer activities and related advocacy campaigns.
An influx of support from powerful international backers may give his campaign a boost.
“There is a genuine, legitimate fear amongst groups like the queer community that the conference will lead to their criminalisation in law,” says Saoyo.
Kaluma has been through an acrimonious divorce and spoken in favour of adultery, making him an unlikely ally for advocates of radically conservative Christian values. Saoyo says their partnership is “not an alignment of values, but an alignment of businesses” that is replicated across Africa.
In Uganda, a 2023 conference sponsored by US ultra conservatives was attended by first lady Janet Museveni. The following month President Yoweri Museveni signed one of the world’s toughest anti-homosexuality acts into law.
Ugandans now face life imprisonment for sexual acts between two people of the same sex and the death penalty for cases of “aggravated homosexuality”.
‘Emboldened’
Directly prior to this week's conference in Kenya, the Uganda hosted its third edition of the African Regional Inter-Parliamentary Conference, once again attended by the president.
In the coming months similar meetings are planned in Sierra Leone, where first lady Fatima Maada Bio will attend the Strengthening Families conference, in Rwanda where the Advocates Africa conference will take place in Kigali, and in Ghana at the African Bar Association annual meeting in October.
Read moreGhana's Supreme Court clears path for anti-LGBT law amid human rights concerns
The timing of the Sierra Leone conference coincides with a ground-breaking bill to legalise abortion up to 14 weeks currently being debated by parliament – a natural target for the ultra-conservative groups.
“They've mapped out who are their strategic partners in the countries they want to go, and they mobilised participants to attend,” says Sainna. “It's a very clear agenda and very well calculated, whether it's in Uganda, Kenya or West Africa.”
While the ultra-conservative groups have been championing the same anti-rights messages in Africa for years, they are now “emboldened”, Saoyo says. “This is the highest number of conferences we’ve had from these groups in Africa in a year.”
The programme for the conference in Nairobi clearly lists the foreign groups sponsoring the event and names individuals speaking.
“The US organisations used to work very silently in Africa, now their logo is on the programme,” Saoyo says. ”European organisations like Ordo Iuris have never had any interest in Africa, but we saw its president here addressing us on Monday.”
As many of the US groups are in league with President Donald Trump, she sees “a direct link between [the far-right initiative] project 2025, Trump’s re-election and what we are seeing in Africa today”.
But the groups are also working in alignment with “African states that are increasingly becoming not only dictatorial but authoritarian, and hugely influenced by religious movements", Sainna says. “These groups are capitalising on that, accelerating and gaining more momentum.”
On the ground, activists and lawyers are braced for what’s to come. “Human rights lawyers watching this space are clearly aware of the agenda,” Sainna adds. “We are intentional around defending the grounding principles of our Constitution, our laws and our policies.”
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