Rise of Africa
143
Ian Taylor
Is Africa Rising? 163
Punam Chuhan-Pole
Africa’s New Economic Landscape
181
Amy S. Patterson
Religion and the Rise of Africa
Revisiting World War One
201
David Ahlstrom
219
John J. Tierney, Jr.
The Hidden Reason Why the First World War Matters
Today: The Development and Spread of Modern
Management
For America “The War to End War” Was Just the
Beginning
Essays and Interviews
233
Yuval Shany
Does International Law Confer upon the People of Crimea
and Donetsk a Right to Secede? Revisiting Self-Determination in Light of the 2014 Events in Ukraine
245
Moisés Naím
253
Rose Gottemoeller
The Decay of Power in Domestic and International Politics
On the Frontline of U.S. Nuclear Policy
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RISE OF AFRICA
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Ian Taylor
165
Punam Chuhan-Pole
183
Amy S. Patterson
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Is Africa Rising? Africa’s New Economic Landscape
Religion and the Rise of Africa
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Religion and the Rise of Africa
Amy S. Patterson
Professor of Politics
The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee
The September 2013 terrorist attack by al-Shabaab on the Westgate mall
in Nairobi, Kenya, heightened the world’s awareness of the role of religion in
sub-Saharan Africa. When members of the Islamic terrorist organization, which
controlled large swaths of Somalia from the late 1990s until recently, stormed
shops and killed patrons and shopkeepers, they attacked symbols of consumerism, globalization, and Western influence. Indeed, most shoppers were either
expatriates or middle- and upper-class Kenyans. Yet, while al-Shabaab’s actions
generated media attention, they also contributed to a simplistic understanding
of religion in Africa that paints religion as violent, primitive, and anti-Western.
These assumptions depict religion as a new force in African security, politics,
and development. As this article illustrates, these portrayals misrepresent reality.
As actors with perceived legitimacy in society, religious leaders and institutions
play complicated and diverse roles in Africa, from mobilizing parishioners for
conservative social policies to negotiating peace agreements. Globalization and
neoliberalism have not only made their actions more visible, but they have also
created conditions in which religion plays an even greater role in global political and economic processes. Religion contributes to the “rise of Africa” because
religious actors and institutions influence security, political and socioeconomic
development, and international norm creation.
To illustrate this argument, this article will first provide brief backgrounds
181
Amy S. Patterson is Professor of Politics at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Her
research interests include religion and political development in Africa, African civil society mobilization,
the politics of HIV/AIDS, and global health governance. She is the author of The Politics of AIDS in Africa
and The Church and AIDS in Africa: The Politics of Ambiguity, and the editor of The African State and the
AIDS Crisis. She has published numerous book chapters on health, civil society, and development in Africa,
as well as articles in Journal of Modern African Studies, Africa Today, Canadian Journal of African Studies,
African Studies Review, Contemporary Politics, and African Journal of AIDS Research. Copyright © 2014 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs
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Amy S. Patterson
on Islam, Christianity, and African Traditional Religions (ATRs) and highlight
the centrality of religion in African society. The next section will demonstrate
how African religious actors and institutions have shaped international security,
democratization, and socioeconomic development in the post-Cold War era,
Western policymakers and donors as well as how they have at times
influenced emerging international
must foster greater understanding norms. Religion’s involvement with
of the role of religion in broader po- these processes contributes to the
emergence of what U.S. President
litical and development processes. Barack Obama termed during the
2014 U.S.–Africa Leaders Summit “a new, more prosperous Africa.”1 Evidence
for this “new Africa” includes economic growth rates for the continent of 5
percent on average between 2003 and 2013, increased African participation
in global peace and security efforts, the rise of an African middle class, and
Africa’s increasing ties with China, Russia, India, and Brazil.2 Third, the article
will analyze why neoliberalism, globalization, and international actors’ reliance
on religion have enabled it to become a driving factor of Africa’s emergence.
Finally, the work will argue that Western policymakers and donors must foster
greater understanding of the role of religion in broader political and develop182
ment processes and seek to include religious actors in crucial decision making
arenas in Africa.
RELIGION IN AFRICA
To recognize how religion contributes to Africa’s heightened global role, it is
crucial to acknowledge the long and diverse history of religion on the continent.
Islam’s introduction into West Africa was a lengthy and gradual process that
began in the ninth century and culminated with reformist (“jihadist”) movements during the 1800s. By the 1300s, Islam was quite common along the
coast of the Indian Ocean, though its spread to the interior did not occur until
the 1700s. Muslim converts from Egypt and the Red Sea brought Islam to the
Horn of Africa during the ninth century. Muslim traders were accompanied by
scholars, some of whom established learning centers, such as Timbuktu, and
sites of governance, such as the Caliphate in Sokoto in present-day Nigeria.3 The
introduction of Christianity is a more recent phenomenon. While individual
Western missionaries came to the continent in the 1700s, their activities became
more institutionalized, and their numbers much greater after the 1884–5 Berlin
Conference during which the European powers officially divided Africa into
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colonies. Western missionaries established schools, hospitals, and universities
and trained many of the continent’s independence leaders. Both Muslim traders
and colonial missionaries encountered African Traditional Religions, otherwise
known as belief systems without centralized organizations. ATRs emphasize
the role of malevolent and benevolent spirits in society, holistic well-being that
emerges from traditional medicines and spiritual cleansing, continuity among
current, past, and future generations, and ancestor veneration. Christianity and
Islam have adopted some ATR components, such as mysticism, spiritual healing,
and prophecy as a reaction to their encounters with ATR.4
Since the introduction of Christianity and Islam into Africa, the number
of adherents across the continent has grown immensely. For example, in 1900,
there were roughly 8.7 million African Christians, but by 2010 that number was
517 million. The number is estimated to reach 595 million by 2025. In 2010,
24 percent of the world’s Christians lived in Africa.5 In 2010, the Pew Forum
reported that 57 percent of Africans were Christian, 29 percent were Muslim,
and 13 percent practice ATRs.6 Furthermore, Africa’s religious landscape is
quite diverse. In addition to the missionary-introduced Roman Catholics and
Mainline Protestants (e.g., Methodist, Anglicans, and Presbyterians), there
are African Independent Churches (e.g., South African Zionists), established
Pentecostals (e.g., Assemblies of God), and relatively new Pentecostals (e.g.,
Winners’ Chapel). Muslims include Sufis who incorporate mysticism, as well
as conservative Salafists.
There are several reasons religion has a strong public presence and a high
level of legitimacy in Africa. First, no matter how small or isolated the community, religious leaders and institutions are visible. A visit to any rural Senegalese
village, even one with fewer than 100 people, will reveal a village imam and a
mosque, where Friday prayers are held and people celebrate Muslim holidays.
Second, religion is highly salient. In 2009, Afrobarometer reported that 90 percent of Africans surveyed in 19 countries said that religion is “somewhat or very
important” in their lives (80 percent of whom said “very important”).7 Third,
religious organizations are the most popular civil society organizations in which
Africans participate. For example, in Botswana, 67 percent of people report that
they are a leader or member of a religious group, but only 21 percent report that
they are a leader or member of a voluntary or community organization.8 Fourth,
the weakness of the state and other civil society groups leads many Africans to
turn to religion when they have problems. For example, in urban Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania, people living with HIV and AIDS seek material, spiritual, and social
support in churches, often because they lack family networks and government
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health centers have few resources.9 Fifth, religious leaders are in a unique position to lead because they tend to have organizational and speaking skills, some
education, and charismatic personalities. These characteristics, as well as their
links to local elites, the state, and external donors, may drive religious leaders
to act as patrons to the poor.10 For example, one Zambian pastor indicated his
patron position by saying, “If you could see the number of text messages in my
phone every day from people who need something!”11
Finally, while most Westerners perceive a distinction between the spiritual
and material worlds, most Africans do not. The unseen world of belief and spiritual forces influences actions in the seen world, while material conditions such
as poverty and disease affect how individuals interact with spiritual powers and
the religious community. For example, while most Africans accept biomedical
explanations for disease and use Western medicines, they may still assert that
troubled relationships or evil spirits contribute to disease, and they may combine Western therapies with prayer. Religious leaders and institutions mediate
between these two realms, a process that increases their power and legitimacy
among their followers and within the broader society. While such power and
legitimacy may be used for a variety of outcomes (not all of which may benefit
socioeconomic development or foster inclusive politics), religious adherents
view this legitimacy and power as positive because their religious leader may
intercede for them in the spiritual realm.12
The above-mentioned factors enable religion to play a crucial role in Africa’s
global emergence. Africans’ religiousness makes religious institutions salient,
legitimate actors that represent the continent. Reliance on religious leaders for
patronage and spiritual mediation enables religious leaders to mobilize citizens in
a variety of arenas, from participation in Islamic terrorist organizations to voting
in democratic elections. And perhaps most crucially, most Africans’ conviction
that the spiritual realm affects politics, economics, and society means that religion will continue to play a crucial role in any transformation of the continent.
AFRICAN RELIGIONS: CONTRIBUTING TO AFRICA’S GROWING ROLE IN THE WORLD
Since the end of the Cold War, African religions’ involvement in international
security, democratization, socioeconomic development, and international norm
emergence has increased. Through their activities in these realms, religions in
Africa contribute to the growing role of the continent on the world stage. In the
area of international security, some religious actors have elicited reactions from
the United Nations and Western states. In January 2013, French military forces
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intervened in Mali when armed Islamist groups attacked the northern cities of
Konna and Mopti, and the Malian government then personally asked for French
assistance. Previously, UN Security Council Resolution 2085 had authorized
an African-led mission to stabilize the country. In the northern territory they
controlled, Islamists imposed Shari’a law, attacked moderate Islamic leaders and
teachers, and destroyed Muslim artifacts that they viewed to be idolatrous. They
also damaged institutions of Islamic education that dated back to the fifteenth
century because they believed the schools undermined fundamental Islamic
teachings. These actions fueled a broader narrative in the West that portrays Africa as the rising center of Islamic terrorism. This discourse assumes that African
groups, such as those in Mali, are linked to a homogeneous international Muslim
movement that seeks to destroy the West. This framework, however, ignores
some of the deeper reasons for these uprisings. Despite Mali’s democratization
in the 1990s, corruption, power centralization, and economic inequality remain
pervasive; northern Mali has high rates of poverty, hunger, unemployment, and
illiteracy. The region’s Tuareg pastoralists have different views of land ownership
than agriculturalists, resulting in land conflicts that the state has rarely addressed.
The weakness of the Malian state provided a power vacuum into which Islamist
organizations could move. Their actions drew the world’s attention and made
Africa a more crucial security concern for the international community. That
is, the rise of Islamist terrorist groups in West Africa led the major powers to
act bilaterally and multilaterally: they increase UN peacekeeping efforts in the
region and training missions for African militaries. Africa also played a role in
these efforts, with African states being six of the top ten contributors to UN
peacekeeping missions.13 Despite this attention, Islamist organizations such as
al-Shabaab, Boko Haram in Nigeria, or the Malian groups are often portrayed
as unified in their desire to violently impose an Islamic state. Islamic combatant
organizations benefit from such a portrayal, since it can magnify the impact
of their actions. In reality, the Malian case illustrates the diversity in Islamist
organizations, all of which have different political, religious, and territorial
objectives and various experiences with Islamist groups outside of Mali and the
Malian state. For example, MUJAO (Mouvement pour le Tawhîd et du Jihad
en Afrique de l’Ouest, or, in English, Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West
Africa) is led by Mauritanians who split from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
in 2011 over strategy and now control the illicit drug trade in the region. In
contrast, the Islamic Movement for Azawad, a Muslim organization with interests in greater Tuareg autonomy, engaged in dialogue with the government until
2013.14 Al-Shabaab’s attack in Kenya in 2013 also shows how Islamic terrorist
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movements may be divided: many assert that the Westgate mall perpetrators
sought to demonstrate their strength over Somalian factions of al-Shabaab,
which have increasingly lost territory and economic resources in the face of the
African Union mission in Somalia. In the terrorist strategy of “outbidding,” the
Kenyan faction sought to show its pure anti-Western conviction and to portray
itself as the true executor of jihad in the Horn of Africa.15
Since the 1990s, religious institutions and leaders have been crucial to
democratic transitions in Africa. In many states, protestors who organized national conventions and demanded multiparty elections pushed out authoritarian governments, which had lost legitimacy because of poor economic policy,
corruption, and high levels of poverty. From 1989 to 1995, there were rapid
improvements in democracy; in fact, 68 percent of the continent’s democratic
changes occurred during this period.16 Religious institutions played a much more
prominent role in this second liberation than they did in the first liberation
from European colonialism. For example, in Malawi, Catholic bishops issued a
scathing letter that condemned the government of Hastings Banda for its lack
of concern about poverty and its human rights abuses. The letter galvanized a
movement that eventually led to Banda’s ousting. In Zambia, mainline Protestant
and Catholic leaders helped to foster an agreement between the opposition and
the incumbent president for multiparty elections.17 Furthermore, in Senegal,
high-level Muslim religious leaders called marabouts refused to issue statements
of support for the ruling party in the 2000 elections.18
Despite multiparty elections and assured freedoms of assembly, speech,
and the press, many new democracies in Africa face corruption, power centralization, weak rule of law, and underdeveloped notions of citizenship. Religious
organizations have taken on these challenges in different ways, illustrating the
diversity of religious approaches to church–state relations, as the following
four examples demonstrate. First, with their emphasis on spiritual rebirth and
morality, Pentecostal Christians have become increasingly involved in national
politics. They have called for anti-corruption campaigns and recruited candidates
they perceive to be morally upstanding.19 Second, religion has been involved
in election processes, as the Christian Council of Mozambique, an ecumenical
organization composed primarily of mainline Protestant denominations, was
in the aftermath of the country’s long civil war.20 Third, religious organizations
have worked across faith lines, as Ghanaian Muslims and Christians did when
they organized candidate debates and called for peaceful elections in 2000,
2004, 2008, and 2012.21 Finally, some grassroots religious organizations, such
as the Jubilee Centre in Zambia, train church leaders in advocacy skills and
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help communities to engage local government officials around issues of water,
education, and health.22 These examples demonstrate how religion has interacted
with political processes to promote democracy.
There have, however, been limits to religion’s involvement in democratic
consolidation. While some religious actors have called for more accountable
and transparent governance, others have been co-opted by the state. In Rwanda,
for example, established churches did not speak against Hutu power, the rise of
political violence, and the increasing marginalization of the Tutsi ethnic group
before the 1994 genocide. Their reliance on state patronage led to their silence
and inaction during the violence.23 Additionally, most of religion’s involvement
in democratization has not trickled down to foster grassroots citizenship or the
attitude that individuals must continuously hold officials accountable.24 Religion
may reinforce attitudes of dependence and inequality since these organizations
are often hierarchical, opaque in decision making, and reliant on patron–client
relations. Thus, while religious institutions have helped to open political space
and urge electoral participation, their ability to reconfigure the relationship
between the state and citizens has been limited. When organizations such as
the aforementioned Jubilee Centre politically engage at the grassroots level, it
is often because of their leadership, independence from church hierarchies, and
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external linkages.
Many Muslim and Christian organizations are involved in socioeconomic
development since these faith traditions emphasize compassion and concern
for marginalized members of society, as illustrated by Muslim almsgiving and
Christian notions of charity. During the colonial period, mainline Protestant
and Catholic missionaries established clinics, hospitals, schools, and universities.
In the last generation, Pentecostal Christians, many of whom no longer shun
involvement in worldly affairs to focus on spirituality, have begun similar social
service programs, often coupling these with evangelism.25 Muslim organizations
have also increased their involvement in social services, particularly Religion-based institutions provide
education. For example, Muslim roughly 40 percent of all health
organizations run 12 percent of pricare services in sub-Saharan Africa.
vate schools in Tanzania, a country
where roughly 45 percent of the population is Muslim and about one-third of the
country’s 9,000 mosques engage in social service delivery.26 There are thousands
of African faith-based organizations (FBOs), some of which are linked to established religious institutions and some of which, like the aforementioned Jubilee
Centre, are independent. As evidence of their impact, religion-based institutions
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provide roughly 40 percent of all health care services in sub-Saharan Africa. They
also design innovative programs in response to societal problems that the state
either cannot or will not address, as the Catholic Church in Zambia did in the
late 1980s when it pioneered home-based care programs for people dying from
AIDS.27 These examples demonstrate that religious institutions are intricately
involved in health, education, and development in Africa.
Increasingly, local churches and FBOs have worked with international
FBOs to improve local communities through service delivery. Through these
relationships, religions in Africa often demonstrate both dependence and agency.
In many cases, religious entities rely heavily on international funding, a fact that
potentially limits their ability to challenge donors’ agendas. Yet, as the case of
many—though not all—Christian churches’ public support for the Ugandan
anti-homosexuality law below illustrates, religious entities do not always follow what funders wish, particularly if such actions go against their convictions.
Additionally, through the process of interaction with external partners, religion
in Africa may shape these partners’ views and programs. The Jubilee Centre in
Zambia, for example, has long-standing partnerships with U.S. congregations,
a fact which has enabled Jubilee to educate U.S. citizens and churches about
the nuances of poverty in Zambia.28
Development scholars and donors have paid greater attention to religion
since the end of the Cold War. Modernization theory, the dominant paradigm
from the 1950s until the 1980s, had posited that as Western education and capitalism grew in non-Western societies, these societies would become more secular.
Power would be centered on a legal-rational, bureaucratic state, not traditional
or religious authorities. These assumptions were not met: non-state actors in
Africa remain crucial centers of power, and cultural beliefs and practices continue
to influence development outcomes.29 Additionally, religious participation and
identity have been the strongest among Africa’s educated middle class, a fact that
undermines the secularization thesis.30 In light of the failure of modernization
theory, the World Bank and the Anglican Church initiated the World Faiths
and Development Dialogue in 1998, a process to foster cooperation between
donors and FBOs. In the area of AIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) includes FBOs in its civil society consultations and the
Global Fund for AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria requires that civil society groups
including FBOs be represented in country-level decision-making structures.
The incorporation of FBOs into the development realm is most apparent
in the U.S. Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was initiated
in 2003 and which by 2013 has committed $52 billion for AIDS care, sup-
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port, treatment, and prevention efforts in 15 focus countries (12 of which are
in Africa).31 In 2005, roughly 20 percent of PEPFAR grants went to FBOs, the
vast majority of which were Christian. Most were international FBOs, such
as Catholic Relief Services and World Vision, which had been involved in development efforts for decades.32 Several factors explain the U.S. government’s
willingness to increasingly fund faith-based groups. First, the George W. Bush
administration supported neoliberal approaches to development in which private
organizations like FBOs respond to social problems. Second, the Republican
majority in the U.S. Congress had a general distrust of African states and international secular NGOs, believing them to be inefficient, in the case of states,
or driven by liberal ideologies, in the case of secular NGOs. Finally, American
Evangelical Christians capitalized on their partnerships with African Christian
organizations to mobilize support for PEPFAR among U.S. Evangelicals. Some
African religious leaders even traveled to the United States to educate church
members and political leaders about AIDS, and particularly its effect on African
churches. Thus, religion in Africa played a crucial role in shaping the largest
ever U.S. aid program on health.33
These factors have contributed to greater attention to religion in Africa, as
well as greater reliance on African religious institutions to foster development.
Pastors chair national AIDS councils and African FBOs receive grants from international FBOs. While international attention and resources have empowered
religious entities, they have also led to resentment from secular community-based
organizations, tensions in religious organizations over funds, and in some cases,
questions about the legitimacy of religious leaders. For example, in some Ugandan churches that have received considerable funds to address HIV and AIDS,
church members have increasingly questioned the transparency and accountability of their pastors, who often control these external resources. The influx of
money into organizations with few personnel or minimal accounting processes
has led to divisions and accusations about financial mismanagement.34 In other
cases, receipt of international donor funds has meant that religious organizations
become professionalized, sometimes at the expense of their religious mission.35
In short, religion’s involvement in development has complex outcomes, not all of
which may be positive for development or for religious institutions themselves.
African religions have also contributed both to the formulating and contesting of global human rights norms. In terms of norm formulation, in the early
2000s, the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC)—a body composed of
mainline Protestant ecumenical councils, theological colleges, and individual
Protestant congregations throughout Africa—participated in the global move-
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ment to provide free access to anti-retroviral drugs for people living with HIV
and AIDS. Along with global ecumenical bodies such as the World Council
of Churches and the Micah Challenge and national ecumenical councils such
as the South African Conference of Churches, the AACC publicly called for
international organizations, donors, and African governments to provide treatment access to millions of Africans dying from AIDS. In the process, they challenged Western pharmaceutical companies that demanded patent protection and
monopoly pricing power. These efforts contributed to the human rights norm
that available medicines should not be denied to millions of ill people living in
poor countries because of international trade agreements that protect patents.
Religious individuals and organizations helped to promote the norm that access to medication contributes to the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the
“highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” as outlined in Article
12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.36
African religious organizations, particularly in Nigeria and Uganda, have
helped contest emerging norms supporting the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people. In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council narrowly
passed a resolution supported by South Africa that expressed concerns about
human rights abuses because of sexual orientation and commissioned a global
report on discrimination against gays. However, many African countries on
the Council opposed the resolution. In 2013, Nigeria and Uganda both passed
legislation that increased jail sentences for people who engaged in homosexual
acts. The Nigerian law criminalizes same-sex marriage, while the Ugandan law
allowed life sentences for anyone convicted of homosexuality, outlawed what it
called the “promotion of homosexuality,” and required citizens to denounce to
the police anyone suspected of being homosexual. In August 2014, the Ugandan
law was repealed by the constitutional court on a technicality; at the time of this
article’s publication, Uganda president Yoweri Museveni planned to appeal the
ruling and Members of Parliament were working to reintroduce a revised bill.37
In both Nigeria and Uganda, many Christian and Muslim leaders supported
these efforts. For example, leaders with the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda
(IRCU) and several Pentecostal pastors supported that country’s legislation,
and when the European Union threatened to cut foreign aid, a leader from the
IRCU said the EU should “respect the sovereign rights of other nations and
desist from tying homosexuality to development aid.”38 Some pastors, such as
Dr. Martin Ssempa, founder of the Makerere Community Church, mobilized
public support for the legislation and condemned Western organizations that
they believed had brought homosexuality into Uganda.
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These actions had three outcomes: the first two show religion’s agency in
global human rights and health efforts, while the third outcome demonstrates
how the negative work of a few religious actors can undermine the work of other
religious actors. First, the Ugandan and Nigerian efforts limit the expansion
of human rights norms to include LGBT people. Second, they complicate the
implementation of other human rights norms, such as the promotion of the
highest attainable standard of health. AIDS counselors, for example, assert that
the increased fear and threat of violence after these laws’ passage prevents LGBT
people from accessing information and services about HIV transmission and
treatment. Finally, religion’s role in contesting emerging human rights norms
for LGBT people in Uganda negatively affected religion’s role in development.
When Western donors carried through with their threat and cut funding to the
IRCU after the law’s passage, the impact was severe for the dozens of small FBOs
and churches that receive donor grants through IRCU. For example, the Friends
of Canon Gideon Foundation, an organization that supports AIDS orphans
and vulnerable children in Kampala through a vocational education program,
lost over half of its funding during the summer of 2014 and was forced to cut
programming. As a result, some young people enrolled in the organization’s
school could not receive tuition waivers to attend classes.39
This section has illustrated how religion contributes to Africa’s role in global
security, democratization, development, and norm emergence. Religion in Africa has prompted security challenges that have forced the United Nations and
Western states to respond. It has, on the one hand, challenged authoritarianism,
but on the other hand, done little to foster civic attitudes that prioritize holding
government accountable. These actions facilitated global democratization in the
1990s but may hamper its long-term consolidation throughout the 2000s. The
UN Millennium Development Goals of poverty reduction and gender equality,
health, sanitation, and education improvement by 2015 have led the world to
focus on Africa, heightening religion’s role in development. Religion’s assertion
of moralistic positions on issues of health, development, gender, and sexuality
has made it more difficult for the world to ignore Africa in the emergence of
global norms.
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GLOBALIZATION, NEOLIBERALISM, AND DEPENDENCE ON RELIGION
African religious institutions and leaders have contributed to Africa’s rise
in the post-Cold War era for three reasons. The first is globalization, or the
increased integration of peoples and cultures through trade, communication,
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and transportation. Globalization has given religious groups the tools to
influence international partners. They have websites, use Skype, transfer funds
internationally, update their supporters through Facebook pages, and use national
and international television broadcasts to gain followers. Their leaders travel
to the West to study and to evangelize populations, creating opportunities for
cross-cultural learning and challenging stereotypes of the continent. For example,
personal experiences in European and Middle Eastern educational institutions
have influenced the political views of Muslim thinkers in Senegal.40 Some
religious groups also contribute to and capitalize on global networks of trade
and migration. One example is the Mouride Islamic Brotherhood in Senegal,
a group with which roughly 50 percent of Senegalese identify. Based on the
teachings of the Senegalese Muslim cleric Sheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacké,
Mouridism emphasizes that work for a marabout is an act of religious devotion.
The marabout often serves as a patron, to whom male migrants look for loans
to pay for airline tickets, connections to facilitate passport and visa applications,
and support networks once in the Western country. In return, migrants remit a
portion of their earnings from the host country to the marabout.41 All of these
activities—religion’s collaboration with Western partners, African evangelism
abroad, and Mouride trade networks—facilitate Africa’s increased global role
since they contribute to development, foster cross-cultural understandings, and
urge economic integration.
While globalization has enabled African religions, and the continent more
broadly, to contribute to trade, development, and politics, globalization has also
been perceived as a threat by some African religious leaders and citizens. For these
individuals, globalization has brought negative influences to the continent, such
as exposure to pornography, abortion, Western gender roles, and homosexuality.
These concerns resonate with African populations. In a 2010 poll, 67 percent
of Zambians, 73 percent of Ugandans, and 74 percent of Ghanaians said they
believed that Western music and movies hurt morality.42 In their support of antihomosexuality legislation, some African religious actors feel they are protecting
Africans, particularly youth, from what are perceived to be nefarious external
influences. In the process, though, they challenge the emergence of norms on
LGBT rights.
Second, neoliberalism has enabled religions in Africa to contribute to Africa’s rise. When African states adopted neoliberal structural adjustment policies
in the 1980s, they implicitly reconstructed the social contract between citizens
and the state. The resulting trade liberalization, privatization, retrenchment, and
cuts in health and education spending led to increases in unemployment and
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household hardship, and they drove rural inhabitants to migrate to urban areas
where they often lacked common ethnic or family ties. Individuals turned to
non-state actors such as religious institutions to meet needs that were previously
addressed by the state and to provide hope for isolated urban migrants.43 Many
urban-based religious institutions became service providers that house AIDS
clinics, orphanages, food distribution programs, women’s cooperatives, and
schools.44 In the process, religion reinforced the dominant neoliberal discourse.
For good or ill, it incorporated Africa into neoliberal (and Western) arrangements of state–society relations and free markets.
Finally, African religious actors are crucial to the continent’s rise because,
in the era of globalization, Africa needs them. This dependence is most apparent
in the realm of development, where bilateral and multilateral donors rely on
African religious groups since they understand local culture and have a presence in all communities. The effectiveness of aid programs, which are always
scrutinized by funders, relies on local, legitimate partners. Dependence is also
evident among Western believers who want to meet their religious mandate to
care for the poor but must develop relationships with African religious groups to
do so. More broadly, the world needs moderate religious organizations in Africa
to combat religious terrorism, to challenge authoritarianism, and to foster the
rights and responsibilities of all citizens.
193
CONCLUSION: TOWARD GREATER UNDERSTANDING
While African religious actors have always played an active role in the public
realm, globalization and media attention have heightened awareness about their
involvement in security, democratization, and development. Their actions contribute to the rise of Africa, showing the West that it can no longer ignore the
continent. Religion’s actions in the public sphere range widely from health provision to terrorism, reflecting the diversity of religious faiths, theologies, structures,
and resources in Africa. This public religion challenges Western-derived norms, as
illustrated through Uganda’s passage of the anti-homosexuality law in defiance of
United Nations’ resolutions and donors’ threats. Religion provides development
innovations, such as home-based care programs for people living with HIV and
AIDS, which became a model for donor AIDS programs. Religion in Africa
engages in politics in both progressive and conservative ways, fostering global
democratization in the 1990s and potentially contributing to its retrenchment
since the mid-2000s. As this article’s opening vignette of al-Shabaab’s attack in
Nairobi illustrates, religion can use violence to achieve ideological and material
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goals. In the process, it challenges norms of stability and power hierarchies and
necessitates responses from the international security regime.
The more pronounced role of religion in Africa in the continent’s trajectory leads to two policy suggestions for the West. First, to be effective in their
engagement with Africa, Western donors and politicians must pay attention to
religion and strive to better understand it. The initiators of PEPFAR partially
understood this idea when they tapped into the work of religious-based health
centers in Africa to distribute AIDS treatment. In contrast, the World Health
Organization’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative did not recognize religion’s
power in northern Nigeria, particularly when some Muslim imams challenged
national vaccination campaigns in 2003. Recognizing the role of religion in
African society does not make one an apologist for religion. Instead, it necessitates dialogue between scholars of religion in Africa and policymakers and
policy-based research on the role of religion in Africa’s political, economic, and
social processes. Second, when Western governments and FBOs work with local religious actors, they must be careful to not contribute to inequalities and
hierarchies that exist in African society. Not all African religious institutions
promote human rights, peace, local development, gender equality, and leadership accountability. Western actors must look for partners who are transparent,
accountable, and representative of all Africans. Of course, this relationship is
two-sided: African religious actors must strive to possess these traits in partnership with the West. Jubilee Centre, for example provides frequent reports to its
donors, a practice which over time has led to greater trust with its contributors.45
Such trust also necessitates that Western actors investigate African culture and
gain knowledge about religious groups in order to adequately assess their ability to foster political and socioeconomic processes. At the same time, Western
partners must be willing to give local religious actors autonomy and equality
in decision making, otherwise they may undermine the agency and legitimacy
of African religious partners who can potentially facilitate broader global goals,
such as development and human rights promotion. Because Africa has become
a crucial player in the international arena partly because of the activities of its
religious leaders and organizations, these actors must be included in global venues
and processes that address international security, socioeconomic development,
and political change. WA
NOTES
1. Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President at a Press Conference after U.S.–Africa Leaders Summit,”
The White House (speech, Washington, DC, August 6, 2014).
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Religion and the Rise of Africa
2. Stephen Radelet, Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way (Washington, DC: Center
for Global Development, 2010); Stephen Ellis, Season of Rains: Africa in the World (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2012).
3. David Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
4. There were hints of some of these practices such as prophecy and spiritual healing in Christianity
and Islam before they arrived in Africa, but Africans emphasized these aspects through a syncretic process.
See: Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa
(London: Oxford University Press, 1998).
5. Amy Patterson, The Church and AIDS in Africa: The Politics of Ambiguity (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011); Pierre Englebert and Kevin Dunn, Inside African Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 2013), 96.
6. “Tolerance and Tension: Islam and Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa,” Pew Forum, April 2010.
7. “Religious Faith and Democracy: Evidence from Afrobarometer Surveys” (Working Paper 113,
Afrobaromter, September 2009).
8. “Are Democratic Citizens Emerging in Africa?” (Briefing Paper 70, Afrobarometer, May 2009).
9. Hansjoerg Dilger, “Healing the Wounds of Modernity: Salvation Community and Care in a NeoPentecostal Church in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania,” Journal of Religion in Africa 37, no. 1 (2007): 59–83;
see also Jeffrey Haynes, Religion and Development: Conflict or Cooperation? (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007).
10. John McCauley, “Africa’s New Big Man Rule? Pentecostalism and Patronage in Ghana,” African
Affairs 112, no. 446 (2012): 1–21.
11. Pastor, interview with author, Ndola, Zambia, June 6, 2014. This information was collected as
part of a broader research project on churches, health, and citizenship in Zambia. All interviewees were
assured of their anonymity.
12. Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar, Worlds of Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
13. “Ranking of Military and Police Contributions to UN Operations,” United Nations.
14. Alexis Arieff, Crisis in Mali (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service Report, January
14, 2013).
15. Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter, “The Strategies of Terrorism,” International Security 31, no. 1
(2006): 49–80.
16. Caryn Peiffer and Pierre Englebert, “Extraversion, Vulnerability to Donors, and Political Liberalization in Africa,” African Affairs 111, no. 444 (2012): 355–78.
17. Paul Gifford, African Christianity: Its Public Role (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
18. Dennis Galvan, “Political Turnover and Social Change in Senegal,” Journal of Democracy 12, no.
3 (2001): 51–61.
19. Terence Ranger, ed., Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa (London: Oxford University
Press, 2008).
20. Ibid.
21. Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, “A Peaceful Turnover in Ghana,” Journal of Democracy 12, no. 2 (2000):
103–17.
22. See: Jubilee Centre website.
23. Timothy Longman, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda (London: Cambridge University Press,
2011).
24. Lamin Sanneh, “Introduction to the Accra Charter of Religious Freedom and Citizenship,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35, no. 4 (2011): 197–200.
25. Ruth Marshall, Political Spiritualties: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2009).
26. Robert Leurs, Peter Tumaini-Mungu, and Abu Mvungi, “Mapping the Development Activities
of Faith-Based Organizations in Tanzania” (Working Paper 58, Religions and Development Research
Network, 2011).
27. John Iliffe, The African AIDS Epidemic: A History (London: James Currey, 2006).
28. International partner of Jubilee Centre, phone interview with author, August 30, 2013.
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29. Patterson, The Church and AIDS in Africa.
30. Pew Forum, “Tolerance and Tension.”
31. Some of this funding also goes to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. See:
PEPFAR, “Shared Responsibility-Strengthening Results for an AIDS Free Generation: Latest PEPFAR
Funding,” 2013.
32. Nandini Oomman et al., The Numbers Behind the Stories (Washington, DC: Center for Global
Development, 2008).
33. Amy Patterson, The Politics of AIDS in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006).
34. Catrine Christiansen, Development by Churches, Development of Churches: Institutional Trajectories
in Rural Uganda (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2010).
35. Louisa Mubanda Rasmussen, “‘To Donors, It’s a Program, But to Us It’s a Ministry’: The Effects of
Donor Funding on a Community-Based Catholic HIV/AIDS Initiative in Kampala,” Canadian Journal
of African Studies 47, no. 2 (2013): 227–47.
36. Ted Schrecker, ed., The Ashgate Research Companion to the Globalization of Health (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate Publishers, 2012).
37. “Uganda’s First Gay-Pride Rally Held after Anti-Gay Law Repealed,” International Business Times,
August 12, 2014.
38. Rebecca Hodes, “Uganda Throws a Party to Celebrate Passing of Anti-Gay Law,” Guardian, April
2, 2014.
39. Representative of Friends of Canon Gideon Foundation, interview with author, Kampala, Uganda,
June 25, 2014.
40. Sheldon Gellar, “Beyond Islamists and Sufi Brotherhoods: Liberal Varieties of Islam in Africa and
the Struggle for Tolerance and Democracy,” in Religious Ideas and Institutions: Transitions to Democracy in
Africa, ed. Edmond Keller and Ruth Iyob (Pretoria, South Africa: UNISA Press, 2012).
41. Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (New York: Public Affairs, 2009).
42. Pew Forum, “Tolerance and Tension.”
43. Jeffrey Haynes, Religion and Development.
44. Donald Miller and Testunao Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social
Engagement (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007).
45. International partner of Jubilee Centre, August 30, 2013.
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