Seminar: Religious business and the violation of human rights in Africa today

The growing pauperization of the lower classes in Sub-Saharan Africa is giving birth to new religiosities; notably, a Christianity of misery, characterized by countless unemployed and street-smart individuals striving for survival. Such people have learned to exploit the socio-political liberalization of the ’90s and they try their luck by proclaiming themselves to be prophets or chosen by God. They combine the Pentecostal rhetoric of ‘prosperity gospel’ with shamanic practices to sell ‘miracles’ to desperate and gullible people. The current and unprecedented ‘religious’ fervor has produced over 3000 prophets and prophetic assemblies in countries such as Cameroon, Nigeria or Congo-Kinshasa, where religious entrepreneurs are rapidly growing in influence among the poorer classes. At times this religious entrepreneurship goes along with criminal drifting, murder cases and offences to human dignity. How are these new figures of power becoming violators of human - civil, political, social and economic - rights? And how much of their existence is the result of corrupt governance?