Nairobi to host Africa’s first International Religious Freedom Summit

Originally published in Christian Daily International

Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, will host Africa’s first International Religious Freedom Summit on June 16. Kenya’s Chief Justice Martha Koome announced that the inaugural meeting will gather judicial officers and organisations working to promote religious freedom from across the continent. 

“I take this wonderful opportunity to invite all of you and I hope you will support our efforts to ignite this movement in Africa,” said Koome, while speaking via video connection at the IRF Summit in Washington, DC on February 4.

The Africa summit hopes to mobilise the religious freedom movement throughout the continent to take action amidst a growing crisis of religious persecution in Africa. Koome acknowledged the partnership of Pepperdine University, the Religious Freedom Institute and the International Religious Freedom Summit who together with Kenya’s judiciary will host the Africa summit. 

She invited the delegates to the summit as part of building “a coalition of faith who will bring transformation across the continent”. She said that a coalition of chief justices, judges and judicial officers from across Africa have come together and committed to bring efficiency and effective access to justice across the continent.

“So far 14 countries have joined this movement and we have many activities planned for 2025 to advance this continental movement,” said Koome.

The IRF Summit brings together over 90 partners that support religious freedom around the globe for an annual two-day, in-person event in Washington DC. Former US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom Sam Brownback said that while the situation in Africa is dire, “there is also cause for hope”.

“We have countless partners on the ground — in Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and elsewhere — who are ready and eager to achieve lasting change. I am delighted to see the reach of the IRF Summit expand in this way,” said Brownback.

The Washington DC Summit’s Africa-specific session titled Spotlight Africa: A Global Justice and Religious Freedom Initiative, heard from panelists working to promote religious freedom in the continent. 

Cameron McCallum, who leads Pepperdine’s Global Justice Institute, said efforts to reform justice systems in Africa — a crucial part in strengthening religious freedoms — started with a pilot programme in Uganda in 2010. 

“What happened is that they were so successful with their own reforms that their neighbours started calling and so we eventually opened our next office in Ghana, then Kigali, Rwanda, and now just a couple years later, it’s up to 14 countries. We have about 22 countries in the pipeline, which is close to half of the continent,” said McCallum. 

Christians in many parts of Africa have continued to be killed, displaced and imprisoned due to their faith. According to the 2024 Open Doors report, 3 100 Christians in Nigeria were killed in 2024 and many more lost their lives in countries like DRC, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Niger. Eight of the top 10 most dangerous places for Christians are in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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