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Minnesota shooting suspect Vance Boelter highlights threat of US radicalisation to African security [1]

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Date: 2025-08

Last month, a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband were assassinated in their home, in what the state’s governor, Tim Walz, has described as a “politically motivated” attack that also saw another lawmaker and his wife injured in a shooting at their home.

The suspect in both attacks, Vance Boelter, has been indicted on six federal charges, including stalking and murder, and is expected to also face state charges.

Since the shootings, it has been reported that Boelter is a Christian missionary who has carried out evangelical work in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Boelter reportedly led a Christian non-profit, Revoformation Ministries, and has delivered several sermons – as seen in several online videos – in the DRC that are characteristic of the homophobic and transphobic preaching that has come to be associated with US Christian right groups in numerous African countries, including Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana.

Activists, journalists and researchers documenting far-right US actors and anti-gender politics have shown that American Christian right groups and individuals are not content with curtailing human rights in their home countries only. They have a marked hatred for reproductive health rights and LGBTIQ+ rights, and they want to spread their ideology and agendas worldwide.

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That Boelter seemingly shared this hatred is reflected in an alleged hit list found in his car, which reportedly named dozens more targets, most of whom are Democrats or have ties to the abortion rights movement, as well as in remarks he made in the Congo about LGBTIQ+ people in the US, who he said “do not know what sex they are”, explaining that this is a sin for God to take care of.

The actions and beliefs of individuals such as Boelter and the Christian far-right groups associated with his ideologies are often passed off as ‘good citizenship’ and ‘upright Christianity’ – two values that are highly regarded in the African countries they target. As in Minnesota, where Boelter held a public service role in 2016, this leaves these countries susceptible to these actors

It is important for political leaders in African countries, where far-right evangelicals like Boelter frequently travel and proselytise, to recognise the potential threat to both national and individual security of those whom they readily accept as ‘well-meaning’ Christians. Boelter’s activities in the US and Africa are not disconnected and need to be seen through this lens and treated accordingly.

African feminist and LGBTIQ+ activists have been warning that US Christian extremists have been spreading their hateful rhetoric and theology in several countries since the early 2000s.

In the past decade, and the past three months especially, we have seen some of the most notorious American anti-rights groups descend upon Africa, including Family Watch International, the World Congress of Families, the Center for Family and Human Rights, and the Alliance Defending Freedom. These organisations have been labelled as hate groups by the Southern Law Poverty Centre, a nonprofit that works to end bigotry and hate crimes – yet they continue their advocacy in Africa with impunity.

Far-right European organisations are also becoming increasingly active in promoting agendas against sexual and reproductive health rights and LGBTIQ+ rights in Africa. The recent Pan-African Conference on Family Values in Nairobi included ultra-conservative organisations such as Poland’s Ordo Luris, France’s La Manif Pour Tous, and the UK’s Christian Voice. The presence of these actors signals an escalation in the interest of transnational anti-gender movements in advancing their agendas in the region, with consequences for the lives of all Africans.

As Akina Mama wa Afrika, a pan-African feminist NGO, outlined in an article on its website, African leaders and citizens must see this for what it truly is: a process of radicalisation that has gone full circle. Far-right individuals and organisations are now willing to travel to preach their agenda, and willing to put money into international efforts to influence legislation or policies or governance – and if their nonviolent extremist means fail to achieve their violent goals, then they’re also willing to use weapons or force to ‘correct’ the world.

This year, Kenya, Uganda and Sierra Leone have played host to meetings organised and sponsored by these foreign far-right groups, where a central theme has been national sovereignty, or, to phrase it another way, the use of Christianity and Christian values to promote a unified global cultural and political vision. Next month, Rwanda will also host a conference where these groups will seek to spread radical messages calling for extreme measures (including legal and policy reforms) in the name of state sovereignty and protection of families and culture.

In their Manichean worldview, these groups view the world not as a place of ubuntu (a southern African philosophy promoting humanity) and oneness, but one where good and evil are in a fight to the death – and they are the good, regardless of whether they carry a gun or a bible.

Just as in colonial pasts, African leaders will be pressured to allow ‘missionaries’ such as Boelter the ease of travel into their countries. They will be hemmed in by petitions, overwhelmed with multiple convenings and demands to sign conventions to remould their societies, not based on their people’s ways of being or their needs, but as designed by these groups. In a sharp contrast to these groups’ countries of origins, where laws are repurposed or enacted to protect current political ideology of the state, African leaders, legislatures and law enforcement have created ease of entry and activity for anyone coming into their countries as missionaries, creating a huge security loophole and a free pass for these groups to exploit for their political ambitions on the continent.

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The authors:

Āryā Jeipea Karijo

Is a former 50:50 investigative journalism fellow and currently is a narratives change weaver and researcher who supports multiple human rights organisations as an ideal dinner guest on their boards, steering committees and community organiser collectives.

Haley McEwen, PhD

Haley McEwen is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg and a Research Associate of the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her recent book, The U.S. Christian Right and Pro-Family Politics in 21st Century Africa, shares research she has been conducting on the topic for over a decade.

Joy Asasira

Joy Asasira is a reproductive and gender justice advocate and strategist with over 14 years of transformative experience. For almost a decade, she coordinated the coalition against maternal mortality from unsafe abortion in Uganda. She also received the Uganda Law Society Best Female Human Rights Lawyer Award in 2018/2019.

Olabukunola Williams

​​Buky is an African Feminist and the former Executive Director of Education as a Vaccine, an organization that works with young people to advance their right to health and protection from all forms of violence in Nigeria. Her current focus is on advancing bodily autonomy, voice, choice and agency for African women, girls and gender-expansive persons.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/guns-and-bibles-how-us-radicalisation-threatens-african-states-security/

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