Summary:

African publics have been described as “notoriously” (Mbiti, 1990) and “incurably” (van den Toren, et al, 2020) religious. However, as religious institutions rank number one of 17 institutions on trust levels, scientific institutions also rank in the top four (Falade, 2018) and many prominent religious leaders are also scientists and have established universities. The Redeemer’s University is owned by the Redeemed Christin Church of God while Crescent University was established by the Islamic Mission in Africa, among others. The science and religion relationship in Africa is thus one of a complex coexistence between two competing ways of knowing, and not a zero-sum game.

The covid-19 pandemic presented the greatest challenge, in several decades, to this relationship with the constraints imposed on all forms of worship across religious groups; Christians, Muslims and African religions. Sunday church services were barred, Friday Jumaat services were cancelled, programmes for Lent and Ramadan were severely curtailed and traditional religious festivals were prohibited as images of overflowing hospitals and corpses were beamed across the world.

The strain of the pandemic on society put to the test the complex coexistence between these competing ways of knowing and this study aims to examine if there has been a shift in public faith in science or religion across Africa using qualitative interviews and Wellcome Trust surveys from three countries: Kenya, South Africa and Ghana. Also, in what direction, more faith, less science or more science less faith, four years after the pandemic first appeared in Africa.

Project deliverables will be one research article, one book chapter, four by one-hour workshops on Artificial Intelligence assisted qualitative data analysis, conference presentations, blog articles and seminars. The articles will be published on academic and social media platforms.