Manmade problems require manmade solutions - Ebenezer Obadare
It is easy to see why a growing number of people in the west have started to see religion as a possible engine of development where the state has failed so dismally in Africa. Across the continent,religious organisations have gained a new visibility by stepping into the void created by anaemic state bureaucracies.
In several rural and urban communities, the pastor or imam (these days often an unemployed university graduate) has replaced the elected councillor. State½society disconnect, long predicted as the inescapable logic of worrisome trends in African governance, is now a profound fact of life. The crisis of the state in Africa has brought society to its knees, and a majority of citizens have, literally, remained there.
The interior expressions of religion on the continent are even more insidious and most clearly evident in an intellectual surrender that sees its current crises as the making of a divine being, one who will, as soon as current earthly arrangements are brought to their imminent end, sort things out and compensate the longsuffering faithful. Religion, therefore, has effectively become Africa½s shadow state, enhancing its dubious social agency, even as the authority and legitimacy of the state rapidly diminishes.
It is easy to see why a growing number of people in the west have started to see religion as a possible engine of development where the state has failed so dismally in Africa. Across the continent,religious organisations have gained a new visibility by stepping into the void created by anaemic state bureaucracies.
In several rural and urban communities, the pastor or imam (these days often an unemployed university graduate) has replaced the elected councillor. State½society disconnect, long predicted as the inescapable logic of worrisome trends in African governance, is now a profound fact of life. The crisis of the state in Africa has brought society to its knees, and a majority of citizens have, literally, remained there.
The interior expressions of religion on the continent are even more insidious and most clearly evident in an intellectual surrender that sees its current crises as the making of a divine being, one who will, as soon as current earthly arrangements are brought to their imminent end, sort things out and compensate the longsuffering faithful. Religion, therefore, has effectively become Africa½s shadow state, enhancing its dubious social agency, even as the authority and legitimacy of the state rapidly diminishes.
