Editor’s Note: PRI sponsored Father Patrick Pullicino’s attendance at the Fourth African Parliamentary Conference on Family Sovereignty and Values. Here is his report from the front lines. Father Pullicino and PRI President Steven Mosher are both members of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and The Family.
I was asked by The John Paul II Academy for Human Life and The Family to attend the Fourth African Parliamentary Conference on Family Sovereignty and Values in Accra, the capital of the African country of Ghana. This annual three-day conference was held in Parliament House Accra from June 3rd to 5th 2026, and around twenty out of the 54 countries in Africa were represented. The first three conferences were hosted by Uganda in the city of Entebbe beginning in 2023, and the number of attendees has grown each year.
The conferences are a push by African lawmakers and civil organisations to defend traditional cultural identity, oppose external ideological influences, and assert regional sovereignty. The core objective is to protect the traditional African family, to resist outside pressures to take up woke agendas that are pushed by the West as “human rights,” and to promote African self-sufficiency in all areas.
By coming together on core traditional and family values, the organizers hope that African countries can form a block large enough in terms of population and resources to be able to veto the undesirable agendas that the West or the East (China) tries to force on them. For decades, this kind of modern colonialism has resulted in attacks on the African family and life. The immediate goal of this, the fourth annual meeting was to produce and adopt a Charter on Family Sovereignty and Values.
Accra, Ghana, was a very appropriate site to hold the Fourth African Parliamentary Conference on Family Sovereignty and Values. This is the country from which the first post-colonial, pan-African leader, Kwame Nkrumah, envisioned the “United States of Africa” in the 1960s. Nkrumah believed, correctly, that economic and political control by former colonial powers was keeping African nations weak and divided. Nkrumah transformed Ghana itself into one of sub-Saharan Africa’s first independent nations, and pioneered pan-African unity, leading to the creation of today’s African Union, one manifestation of his core vision.
The new drive to unify Africa around family and life issues was begun three years ago in Uganda. MP Sarah Opendi, Chair of the Uganda Parliamentary Forum on the Family, was the founding chair of the first of these African Parliamentary Councils. MP Opendi was also the primary legal and political architect of the African Charter that was put forward for adoption at the Accra meeting. The Charter is an attempt to unite African countries in support of African cultural and family values, as well as urge African heads of state to oppose novel international “human rights” that conflict with these.
For decades, Western countries and international organizations have tried to force Uganda and other African countries to legalize abortion and recognize LGBTQ+ “rights” by linking these demands to the provision of foreign aid. Uganda has been a particular target, attacked for its stringent laws against homosexuality. But it must be remembered that in the 19th century the King of Uganda, Kabaka Mwanga, had 45 young Catholic men executed for defying his authority and refusing his sexual advances. These men became the Martyrs of Uganda, and they are celebrated throughout Uganda every year as symbols of religious faith and conservative cultural values. The country of Ghana has, as well, recently passed laws against homosexuality. Both countries have been threatened with the loss of foreign aid as a result.
The African Charter put forward at the conference targeted several other areas of concern, particularly in the area of so-called “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (SRHR). This broad term includes all kinds of mischief, including abortion, radical gender ideology, sexuality education, and controversial medical practices, moral principles and legal systems. The Charter strongly opposed these perversions, speaking of the need to defend the African family, parental rights and Africa’s spiritual and cultural identity. The dangers of contraception went unmentioned, however.
MP Sarah Opendi opened the talks, warning of the dangers of accepting financial aid that comes with hidden clauses attacking family values and saying that Africa needs to create its own seed money. Uganda, she said, has recently taken a huge step in that direction with the signing of the Protection of Sovereignty Act.
Signed by Ugandan President Museveni in May, the Act requires foreign-funded groups to register, limits their political advocacy, and contains severe penalties for violators. It also mandates strict disclosure of any international funding that is received by domestic organisations engaged in advocacy and human rights, and stricter reporting requirements on how such funds are utilized. The law is directed at curbing the influence of foreign-funded groups pushing abortion and gender ideology.
The Archbishop of Kumasi, Gabriel Anoyke, representing the Ghanaian Conference of Bishops, gave a talk eloquently defending the teaching of the Church–and nature itself–that there are only two genders, man and woman.
The Conference ended by successful signing of the Charter by the delegates. There was only one abstention, this from the South African representative, who said she could not sign because her country does not define marriage as between a man and a woman, as the Charter does. Which is to say, its Leftist rulers have already succumbed to the ideological colonization that the delegates had assembled to fight.
The conference delegates were unified in their conviction that, for decades, Africa has been ruthlessly manipulated to the detriment of the African family and traditional African values. But they were also excited to rally together to preserve African sovereignty in defence of family and traditional values and optimistic that Africa was now moving forward.
