Western anti-LGBTQ groups exert growing influence in Africa
Foreign homophobes are holding anti-gay strategy conferences across Africa this summer
Ultra-conservative Christian anti-LGBTQ groups based in the United States are exerting ever greater influence on policymakers across Africa, with a growing presence at international forums to promote an anti-rights agenda, as typified by a recent government sponsored conference held in Uganda last month. Through their African allies, the groups have spent over a decade channeling millions of dollars into funding anti-LGBT narratives in Africa in a bid to spread influence and change laws to align with their conservative values.
These movements seek to impose rigid, exclusionary values that contradict the continent’s diverse and historically dynamic cultures.
The Third African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family and Sovereignty held last month in Entebbe, Uganda, was billed by the Ugandan Parliament as a meeting of “political leaders, parliamentarians and faith-based actors from across Africa and beyond” aiming to “defend traditional values, strengthen national sovereignty and resist external ideological pressure.” All three Inter-Parliamentary Conferences were hosted by the State House and attended by President Museveni and his wife Janet Museveni.
It’s one of four similar gatherings taking place across Africa beginning May 2025. While Western ultra-conservative groups have been conducting anti-rights activities in Africa for years, they now seem to be emboldened to the extent that they can hold a record number of high-level conferences in Africa in a year.
Joy Asasira, a reproductive and gender justice campaigner in East Africa, says that such gatherings not only “stunt and reverse rights but also allow for sharing tactics and resources by anti-rights groups.”
Many of the participating organisations are part of the ecosystem of Family Watch International (FWI), an organization designated as a hate group by the US-based Southern Poverty Law Center for its anti-LGBTQ agenda. FWI’s president is Sharon Slater, who speaks at many of these events.
According to analysts, the people behind these conferences have gained enough momentum to influence policy at both a national and a continental level. Evidence provided by human rights activists shows that similar gatherings in the past influenced the passing of harsh anti-LGBTQ laws in Uganda and Ghana. Ghana’s former president did not sign his country’s bill into law, but conservative MPs, supported by their anti-LGBTQ allies from the West, reintroduced it in March under the new government.
An investigation by Open Democracy revealed that FWI, which co-sponsored the Interparliamentary Conferences in Uganda, played a key role in framing and passing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023, which is one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws with penalties including life in prison or the death penalty in some cases.
The other sponsors were the continental branch of FWI, Family Watch Africa, and Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccination advocacy organisation founded by the US Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Whenever an anti-LGBTQ law is passed in Africa, you are assured Sharon Slater had a hand in it,” says Tabitha Saoyo Griffith, a human rights lawyer and Amnesty International Kenya board member.
Another anti-LGBTQ gathering, the Pan-African Conference on Family Values organised by the Africa Christian Professionals Forum, took place in Nairobi, Kenya from 12-17 May 2025. This was a high-level gathering 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. FWI President Sharon Slater presented the opening session.
“The wicked witch of the west is back to Kenya, yet again, in an attempt to coerce government leaders to pass anti-LGBTQ laws that protect ‘African values.’ This witch has a LOONG history of meddling with Africa,” Tabitha Saoyo posted on X.
Conservative Kenyan MPs are reportedly working on the 2023 “Family Protection Bill” which aims to outlaw same-sex relationships, LGBTQ+ activities, public cross-dressing and related advocacy campaigns. The bill was submitted by the opposition MP Peter Kaluma shortly after he attended the 2023 Inter-Parliamentary Conference in Uganda.
Kaluma spoke at the Kenya conference, and in his remarks, he accused human rights organisations of “recruiting” young Kenyan university graduates and allegedly paying them to take up LBGT lifestyles. These are exactly the same lies that anti-gay groups in Uganda used in pushing for the passing of AHA.
In June, a group affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, will host a Strengthening Families Conference June 26-27 in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where participants will strategize on ways to maintain and strengthen “traditional” families. Local Mormon, Catholic, and Muslim religious leaders are all scheduled to speak at the event, as are members of the Sierra Leone Parliament. Greg and Sharon Slater of Family Watch International are both scheduled to take part.
Sierra Leone First Lady Fatima Maada Bio issued an online welcome to the conference. Her participation is “worrying,” says Ramatu Bangura, co-chief executive at Purposeful, a hub for girls’ activism in Sierra Leone, because she has previously championed the rights of girls and women.
Bangura is concerned that the Strengthening Families conference will affect a landmark bill before parliament that could overturn the country’s British colonial-era abortion ban, legalising a termination at up to 14 weeks for any reason and at any stage under certain conditions. She suspects the current delay to the bill is due to the conference, which will act as a “rallying point” for the anti-rights movement.
Previous attempts at decriminalising abortion in Sierra Leone have failed because of lobbying from religious and anti-abortion groups. Although Bangura believes Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio supports reproductive rights, she describes the pressure from these groups as “intensive.”
In August, Advocates Africa, a network of Christian lawyers and law students, will host a conference in the Kigali, Rwanda, with backing from Alliance Defending Freedom, a US-based group that lobbies against LGBTQ and abortion rights.
Observers say the support that hate groups are getting from leading figures in the global anti-rights movement is a significant development.
“Their biggest ally is in the Oval Office in the name of Donald Trump. If you were wondering where the money taken from USAID, UN Population Fund, etc., is going, wonder no more. The money is coming back in Africa but to do exactly the opposite of what it was doing in the past, which is to bury human rights,” says Josh Mayanja, a human rights advocate in Uganda.
He says new international groups are emerging at these anti-rights conferences such as La Manif pour tous [a French anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ+ group], Ordo luris [a ultra-conservative Polish Catholic group], and Political Network for Values [a global far-right network that rejects abortion and same-sex marriage]. These groups also co-sponsored the Nairobi conference.
Two of the Nairobi conference co-sponsors, C-Fam and the Alliance Defending Freedom, were reportedly on the advisory committee of Project 2025, which has led to life-threatening cuts to development aid in Africa. Meanwhile, FWI is said to have worked with the Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025.
Project 2025’s proposals to slash USAID grants, prioritise funding for faith-based organisations, and prohibit funding for “sexual reproductive health and reproductive rights” and “gender equality” programs have all been implemented.
