Right-wing African Members of Parliament (MPs), including some of the continent’s most vociferous anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ lawmakers, united with anti-vaxx conspiracy theorists for the first time at a conference in early May.
Aside from the expected rhetoric against abortion and LGBTQ people, the African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty gave a platform to a speaker who claimed that a range of vaccines were unnecessary or designed to reduce African fertility – including the COVID-19, Human Papillomavirus (HPV), malaria and even tetanus vaccines.
Others agitated against the World Health Organization’s (WHO) pandemic agreement currently being negotiated, describing it as a “power grab” aimed at imposing abortion, same-sex marriage and lockdowns on the world.
The anti-vaxx charge was led by Kenyan doctor Wahome Ngare and South African Shabnam Mohamed, who describes herself as a lawyer and journalist.
Ngare is chairperson of the African Sovereignty Coalition and a director of the rightwing Kenya Christian Professionals Forum (KCPF).
Mohamed is a leader of an “Africa chapter” of US presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s Children’s Health Defense, one of the key global sources of vaccine misinformation. She is also part of the World Council on Health, an alliance of anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists and alternative health providers.
See also Part 2 of this series (2) Disinformation: Anti-WHO Convoy Heads to Geneva for World Health Assembly