ABSTRACT
The chapter discusses religion and politics in West Africa focusing on the various ways in which governance and the affairs of state interact with religious issues and sources in relationships fraught with tensions and benefits in equal measure. West Africa is now a religiously pluralistic sub-continent. Here, we look specifically at the roles that traditional African religions and world religions of external origin – Christianity and Islam in particular – play in West African public life through active engagements with governance, politics and the exercise of political power. In addition to what we describe below as an inseparable relationship between religion and politics in African traditional settings there have been other developments relating to the presence of Christianity and Islam. Within public spheres the media are constantly reporting on the relationship between religion and politics, such as Christian/Muslim clashes in the search for control. Heads of state patronize the services of diviners and Muslim clerics dispensing charms and amulets for protection again enemies. The following observation by Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar on the relationship between political figures and custodians of spiritual power is based on visits to Mary Akatsa, a well-known preacher and healer in Kenya, by the then President Daniel Arap Moi:
Mary Akatsa has reportedly carried out many acts of healing that she ascribes to the work of God, sometimes performed simply by touching people with the Bible. She is famous enough to earn visits from her country’s then President, Daniel Arap Moi. She is not the only prophet to have been sought out by politicians who consider it in their interest to associate with powerful spiritual leaders.1
