Panel Discussion: With the Help of God(s)? Religious Actors and Sustainable Development in Africa
Abstract
- Abstract
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On 19 January 2022, the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth & The German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg presented the
Public online panel discussion
“With the Help of God(s)? Religious Actors and Sustainable Development in Africa”
On the African continent and elsewhere faith-based organizations provide health care services, religious groups offer education to kids and young adults, and religious leaders act as conflict mediators. At the same time, we hear about radical Christians performing crusades or Jihadi groups attacking villagers. Religious actors seem to be able to foster as well as undermine sustainable development. Today, a majority of African political leaders, Western governments, international organizations, and (I)NGOs acknowledge the relevant role of religious actors to bring about sustainable development and put great hope in their potential. What are these hopes based on? How do religion and sustainable development connect? Do they connect at all? And what challenges arise when religion and politics go hand in hand?
For the online panel discussion "With the Help of God(s)? Religious Actors and Sustainable Development in Africa" the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and GIGA invited the following participants:
Panel:
+ Damaris Parsitau (Egerton University, Njoro & African Association for the Study of Religion)
+ Eric Stollenwerk / Matthias Basedau (GIGA, Hamburg)
+ Eva Spies (Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth)
Commentators/discussants:
+ Nabiela Farouq-Martius (GIZ)
+ Daniel Salau Rogei (Carleton University, Ottawa)
Chair: Paula Schrode (Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth)
Introduction: Doris Löhr (Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, University of Bayreuth)
Description
- Transcript
- [Music] okay so good afternoon ladies and gentlemen dear colleagues and all interested parties on behalf of the africa multiple cluster of excellence and the giga institute i would like to welcome you to the public online discussion today we are very happy that some of the preliminary informal discussions between alexander stegerbeck from the cluster and the giga have eventually led to this event both institutes are associated with the keywords africa and policy research among others but both aim to facilitate science transfer into politics with theoretical and practice oriented approaches we hope that today's event will be an overture to further collaboration and that we might like to identify joint topics for teamwork besides the networking factor we are excited to present a highly current topic today and for that we have assembled great expertise on the channel and the pamphlet sorry on the panel so before i head over to the chair professor paula schroeder some housekeeping the event will be recorded if you don't want to be seen please turn off the camera and we have limited the chat that means you can only use the hands raising functions for your questions that answer answers so i hope without further ado i will hand over to the chair lean back enjoy and enjoy the afternoon thank you yeah thank you doris for this introduction and welcome everyone good to have so many people here interested in this um panel this afternoon so yeah i have the honor to substitute our colleague alexander schroederberg or to try and substitute him as the chair for the session um first of all i would like to introduce all um guests for this session as you see on the slide right now their names um so first we will have a contribution um by the marcus pascueta so the order of this event is that in the beginning we have um three research inputs and then we have two responses followed by a general discussion with all participants where you are also um allowed to join in so first we will have a contribution by the marches pasitau and i apologize for probably not pronouncing your names correctly so okay um social scientist and senior lecturer in religion and gender studies at egerton university in kenya and she's also president of the african association for the study of religion in africa and its diaspora then there will be a presentation by eric scholenberg he's a political scientist working at the german institute for global and area studies in hamburg at the institute for african studies for african affair as it is called i think he's also part of a project that aims at developing policy recommendations the third input will be by my colleague ifa spies professor for the study of religion with focus on africa at the university of firewood and also principal investigator at the african multiple cluster of excellence at the university of ireland then we have two responses first one from nabila farouk matsus scholar in islamic studies and project leader at the german set chef international and the second one from daniel salaze scholar at the department of sociology and anthropology at carlton university in ottawa canada we start with the three inputs and as you will see they come from very different research backgrounds in terms of methodology as well as research questions theoretical frameworks but i'm sure this will provide a good foundation for stimulating discussion with different perspectives as i said the inputs will then be followed by the two responses with the possibility for the speakers to react to these responses and then finally we open the general discussion where the audience is invited to join yeah my own job in the following would basically be to watch the time so each speaker has eight to ten minutes i will give you a sign after eight minutes that means you will have two more minutes and then um yeah i would have to make you stop okay so yeah i'm looking forward to your contributions and i invite you dr maurice farcital to start the floor is yours okay thank you everyone um i'm just going to try to share my screen um [Music] yeah i think it's coming uh so once again thank you everyone to and and to the organizers for this opportunity um today i'm just going to share with you uh some of my latest policy uh research on faith-based actors and girls education uh in kenya uh and what i'm going to share about is based on uh two important uh things for me one is that i'm an actor i am a girl's education a thought leader leader in girls education i run my own non-profit organization called that massage land in kenya which is an organization that you know i created to support vulnerable girls to uh to go to school and uh you can find that uh information on my website if it is running i haven't checked it in uh a few weeks um the the other one is based uh some of what i'm going to say which is really basically conversational is based on a policy research study that i did for the center for reproductive uh health for reproductive rights um an organization a human rights organization based in nairobi and washington dc and i undertook a study in eight african countries uh during the lockdown uh doing zoom conversations with main actors you know uh faith-based actors and human rights actors and feminists and gender rights actors in eight different countries in africa and i wanted to understand the impact of government 19 pandemic on women and i zeroed in on girls education and the kind of conversation that has been taking place in kenya since the knockdown um the kenyan government locked up the country on the 25th of uh march 2020 just immediately uh the copied pandemic emerged and that also meant that schools uh were closed for a very long time and within a very short time just a very significantly high number of teenage girls across the country but mainly in rural areas and in vulnerable communities fell pregnant and that in itself generated tremendous conversation between policy makers parents and faith-based organizations and actors um excuse me um for me just um you wanted to show slides i think i wanted to make it right yeah and then it didn't look like it came and now i i think i'm just going to forget about the slides um but if anyone is interested with the slides um i'm happy to share that uh with everyone so uh faith-based organizations and faith actors are really important interlocutors in sustainable development particularly in africa where uh faith or religion is is critically important and and that it also um affects people's lives and and public life you know religion faith-based uh organizations are always you know uh colliding together with uh you know very publicly uh in in many african countries and kenya is not an exception um at the same time we also know that faith-based actors um are becoming increasingly influential in policy issues whether that is politics or or social issues or um just a wide range of uh policy social religious uh economic uh and political issues and and you know religious actors in in my country especially are really huge stakeholders in in education itself much of the best schools in the country the best universities uh the best hospitals and clinics are faith-based you know they are they are owned by churches they are owned by uh faith-based organizations that that simply means that if when it comes to policy issues development issues faith-based actors are critical important actors uh when it comes to you know discussions around um health and education and and and and religious actors particularly from uh mainline churches but also from newer churches pentecostal and charismatic churches uh where you know that's that's my biggest friend that's uh where i look at my research are having real impact on uh you know uh spiritual issues and uh gender questions and and gladly try to move their teachings into women's bodies uh what happens to girls uh you know bodies and sexuality and trying actually to uh discipline um you know sexuality and sexual citizenship uh for that matter and i discussed that with adrian van klenken in in in one of our general articles um and and so they are using that they are using their power because they are powerful stakeholders in in development in education sector in uh in the health sector they are using that to increasingly assert conservative ideologies and conservative teachings uh onto uh public policy and um and i'll just give a few examples of the things that really struck me in my research but also through participate observation throughout the lockdown and even before when schools closed there was this tremendous outcry in the country there was that there was um you know an increase of teenage pregnancy which which has been happening for a very long time but it seems to me that uh teenage pregnancy numbers went quite high during uh the lockdown we also had a lot of gender-based violence we had um you know lots of sexual violations rape and that sort of thing and what was striking for me is how religious uh actors shape ideas around teenage pregnancy and around uh uh you know what was happening around education issues and and how they continue to perpetuate uh gender norms and inequality including you know uh women bodhisatt so this this this afternoon i i discussed three areas in which i felt that faith actors are really having a real impact on the area of uh a number of issues teenage pregnancy comprehensive sexuality uh safe abortion and reproductive health technologies um and also lgbti rights uh which is like um sort of taboo uh to mention here and and and so this this work is based on evidence base i i have lots of data and i said i could share that uh with with everyone the numbers the kind of uh numbers that i was able to to find out as to what is uh happening uh to girls but what struck me is that there was just so much politicization moralization and spiritualization of teenage pregnancy in kenya and this was led by faith actors from the catholic church from the pentecostal churches from mainstream churches and and catholic uh and and and muslim organizations but also faith allied lobbies like uh catholic doctors uh doctors for uh choice uh there's also the kenya christian uh forum there's the kenya christian uh uh lawyers uh professional organizations you know organizations that have really had an impact in in the kind of discourses that are taking uh place in in the public sphere and from a phase uh point of view there was moralization the church opposed um first of all how they lived how they they understood teenage pregnancy they blamed tv they blamed uh pornography they blamed the internet they blamed parents uh for teenage pregnancy and they blamed the gods themselves for being girls of loose morals who are not able to control their sexual urges and that's why they got pregnant and i found that uh you know particularly problematic the minister of education himself blamed parents uh for their luxity not controlling their girls and their lack of morality in society and their collapse of uh morals in society so the government spoke their language of faith-based uh uh actors and and and and parents who are blamed and parents and uh on the other side blamed the government uh for for what was happening to their girls and you know so there was this sort of contestation spiritualization moralization and also the politicization of teenage pregnancy and two more minutes two moments what i found disturbing is that uh nobody spoke for girls nobody uh spoke about what is really happening what is the elephant in the room the left elephant in the room is the lack of comprehensive sexuality education uh so we have a new constitution and uh you know several organizations have been trying to entrench the establishment of comprehensive sexuality education in kenya but our faith-based actors have resisted that because they believe that uh this is going to you know create more uh you know moral issues in the in the country and during the population conference at the u.n population conference 25 plus 2-5 in nairobi faith-based organizations mounted serious opposition and actually held an alternative conference to uh you know to agitate against the adoption of comprehensive sexuality education safe abortion and lgbt rights and that conversation to me i find that um there's just this interesting uh interface between public policy and faith actors but also uh the fact that education has become a spiritual and demoralization issue and for me my entry point is uh the concept of reproductive justice i want to see people having conversation that centers the the challenges that girls face every day in school and uh and i didn't see that so i found a contestation a politicization a moralization and and uh just a contest between faith actors parents and uh even teachers and lobbies but nobody is having conversations about what is right for the girls and so for me the concept of reproductive justice is the framework that i think should be able to center the rights of girls and gender equality in kenya sorry sorry for the short time i would talk until the cows come home but thank you it was perfect thank you very much for your input thank you um yeah so i we can continue immediately with the next um input by eric schoenberg please the flow is yours hey perfect thank you very much before i start with the presentation i just want to thank the university of biohoid and everybody involved in organizing this once more since we co-organized this with the giga this was terrific and i'm very glad we could make this happen so a big thank you for everybody involved on the organizational side of things and now i'm gonna try and share a slide with you and let's see if this works um just give me a second okay i hope this is visible for everybody in full screen and those are just a couple of key points a couple of key takeaways um since i'm going to be talking about a project that i'm co-heading together with matthias basido at the giga and the project is called freedom and development question mark religious actors freedom of religion or belief and sustainable development and really the motivation behind this project is that we have seen positive developments in the last years and decades of the sustainable development goals or indicators related to the sdgs on the global level however we also witnessed that sub-saharan africa in some respects is lacking behind some of those positive developments at the same time we have witnessed it recently freedom of religion or belief or in short forbe and religious actors are fairly new high up on the agenda of many development agencies and international organizations so the question for us is to what extent can forb and religious actors help foster sustainable development in africa and possibly also beyond so the findings that i'm going to present to you today are still preliminary since the project is still up and running until the end of 2023 but both from the quantitative side and from the qualitative side i think we have some relevant insights already so the assumption is often on the policy side more forb equals more sustainable development and we want to find out whether there is empirical evidence for that so looking at the quantitative data that we analyze on the global level we can say that forbes has increased since the 1940s but sort of stagnated and even slightly decreased during the last couple of years at the same time in sub-saharan africa we can see a fairly high and stable degree of for compared to other world regions yet the relationship between forbe and the sustainable development goals that we have considered so far on the project is not clear-cut and not straightforward so far we considered the sdgs three good health and will be being five gender equality and sixteen peace justice and strong institutions and we compiled a new global quantitative data set to take a look at how four correlates with those sdgs and the preliminary results suggest that the correlations are fairly heterogeneous so we found that there is only a weak negative to no correlation between forb and sdg3 so health and well-being that there is a positive but only moderate to weak correlation with gender equality and that there is a negative moderate negative to no correlation with both peace and strong and just institutions as two components of sdg 16. however i want to stress that this evidence that we found on the global level that not does not necessarily reflect to the same degree on the sub-national or the individual level so more analyses are necessary here at the same time the evidence that we've produced so far is rather correlational and should not be overstated with regards to causal effects and more research potentially experimental research for example is necessary here what we also found and this is not very surprising is that forbe is not the only factor that is correlated with sustainable development and i'm not going to go into all the details of the alternative explanations that we found to be relevant but just to give you a couple of examples for example the degree of democratization is positively correlated with good health and well-being gni per capita is positively correlated with female empowerment and gender equality and we have factors such as ethnic fractionalization that is negatively correlated with peace and where statehood or the degree of statehood is positively correlated with um just and strong institutions measured for example by the rule of law that's sort of the quantitative findings and the quantitative sides of the project that we've conducted so far however we wanted to drill deeper into the subject and also conducted qualitative case studies in burkina faso and eritrea also in india and indonesia but this year we're also going to continue this work by looking at sudan and ethiopia and the preliminary findings that we've produced so far mainly in burkina faso and eritrea is that the scope and the fields of activities for religious actors and face-based organizations are highly diverse and heterogeneous so while some focus on the local or regional level in their specific country others have national impact or even transnational ties and networks at the same time the development fields where face-based organizations are active range tremendously while some focus exclusively on public health or education others cover the whole lot from conflict mediation to food provision to education and public health to give you just a couple of examples so this this variation needs to be taken into account um what we also found pretty clearly is the ambivalent role of the state when it comes to sustainable development and faith-based organizations so the state can act both as a development spoiler when it basically holds back any activities of faith-based organization as we see in eritrea for example at the same time the state can be a very valuable and important cooperation partner for face based organization as as is happening in many instances in burkina faso for example so whether the state is cooperative or a spoiler has a high impact on the effectiveness of the development efforts of faith-based organizations so what we also found furthermore in the qualitative studies is very often face-based organization enjoy a high degree of legitimacy among local populations so the social acceptance of those actors is fairly high and often higher than that of state institutions such as the police for example which is an important insight to consider when we are seeking to strengthen sustainable development and those actors with high legitimacy might be more appropriate to provide services to local populations than state institutions for example at the same time we found that there is often a need for balancing the achievements of sdgs versus value-based development policies because there are clear areas of tension and damaris are already alluded to some of them so freedom of belief thinking about blasphemy or conversion for example are just two examples where face-based organization do not necessarily share the norms and values of western donors for example not all of them of course but this happens sometimes and needs to be taken into account and the same goes for values of gender equality or the rights of lgbtqia groups so to conclude religious actors are highly diverse and relevant when considering factors such as public health um strong just institutions and peace and gender equality and we're going to do more analyses on other sdgs in the upcoming weeks and months at the same time it is pretty clear that the link between forbes and sustainable development is not consistent so it seems to be rather weak to moderate which partly challenges the strong emphasis on forb that international organizations or development agencies heads have put on it in recent past which is to say that forbe is an important building block for sustainable sustainable development but it's not the magic key and not the solution to all of the development problems at the same time the tensions that are there or can be there between faith-based organizations and the goals of international development agencies need to be taken into account and the selection of cooperation partners on the ground among face-based organizations requires comprehensive local knowledge and a comprehensive dialogue between local actors and external international actors and last not least the unintended consequences of cooperation should not be underestimated for both faith organizations and the international external actors when thinking about regional national and local power relationships and the reactions of the population these are the those possible corporations and i think i'm i want to close with a question so i think what really is important to find out and what i would be interested to discuss with you today among other things are the scope conditions under which religious actors can contribute to sustainable development and how we can best promote those scope conditions through external cooperation and external involvement and i think i'm simply going to stop here and i'm very much looking forward to questions and comments and the conversation thank you thank you very much and it's exactly 10 minutes so um yeah the next speaker is eva spies and over to uefa yeah thank you very much um eric would you mind to stop sharing the screen thank you yeah thank you very much so i i will present um a different approach different perspectives but actually and interestingly um we i think we have similar points or conclusions or key key points um my statement is based on the work of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project in the framework of the cluster here in pirate um i show you the title here so do you see the full screen i'm not sure yeah okay so so the title of the project is religious engineering the making of moralities development and religion in niger and you can see the names of the research group members here and but what i hear say here is my take on on this whole project of course so in our ethnographic qualitative research we take the work of pentecostal churches turkish humanitarian organizations local salafi associations and governmental agencies in nigeria as well as national and international development policies as a starting point to study how transformation is imagined and most of all how is it done we want to learn more about how certain actors want to transform what they perceive as deficient or unsatisfactory this way we look at a wide variety of projects of transformation without categorizing these projects a query as projects of development or as projects of religious reform we want to go beyond the discussion about religious actors in development and also consider projects of transformations that are understood as alternatives to western development are as independent from developmental discourse altogether the research project is not about a rejection or an advocacy of a development policy that sees religious actors as relevant in bringing about sustainable development it rather aims at grasping also those practices of transformation that do not usually fall within the scope of international development there are for sure advantages in supporting religious actors however our approach reveals also certain flaws and the promotion of religious actors in national or international development approaches and policies and challenges which may be involved in their cooperation with religious actors of course um damaris and eric also mentioned this already the central question seemed for me seems to be what is actually the aim of such a cooperation and and i would like to make five points in this regard the first refers a little bit of the development policy of the previous german government um and the government there the development cooperation um with the focus on religious actors in development and we we categorize this as a kind of form of religious engineering which means development work um this development work refers to or let's say tabs into particular religious values groups and networks to implement improve prof and implement and improve projects of transformation and if we we still see the first slide is it a mistake yes i don't i i'll give you the other story thank you thank you um so um so to implement and improve projects of transformation and at the same time this policy influences the religious traditions it refers to incorporating with certain groups and highlighting particular values these religious groups and values are promoted and others are not promoted so development policy directly intervenes in the religious landscape of other nation states and tries to somehow shape or let's say domesticate even certain religious groups in and through cooperation this may not be the aim of cooperation with some religious groups per se but is it is a consequence or maybe an unintended consequences eric just just mentioned i show you my five points this was the first point and the second point is more general to understand religious traditions values or networks only as a useful tool to advance projects of sustainable development is a pragmatic approach of course but it also narrows the possibility to learn from other ways of knowing and seeing the world and it prevents that development discourse is questioned development thinking which still implies of course patterns of hierarchy inequality a comparison between the underdeveloped and the developed this will not change renew or abandon if others people's practices and use are not understood in their own term on their own term but only as instrumental for existing approaches looking at local aims and practices of transformation might help this is the idea of our project to better understand how those attempts to improve emerge in relation to ideas of mainstream development this could make possible and to acknowledge the ideas of let's say the salafi organization to promote moral change and education as both and an attempt to do change differently and as a critical reworking of development discourses take the example for example of a salafi organization in nigeria studied by hamisto with asha her doctor student in our project this group um perceives an ongoing decay of moral order in nigeria similar to maybe what you experienced in mars um so and they they work with the notion of tabia education in housa and which refers mostly to moral education and is seen as the basis for any other education the enemy let's say of talbia education is the hegemony of western culture this includes views for example on gender relations but in the end their long-term goal associated with moral education and change comes pretty close to ideals of what we might call good governance um so i'm sorry i miss you first oversimplifying but um i think this is this is my reading of it so how could the capabilities and knowledges of religious actors really be recognized and not only used and can uncomfortable partners maybe like a salafi organization also you need partners in the development framework that rather highlights shared values and consensus as the richest actors in development paradigm usually does my third point refers to context of religious plurality because i think taking religious actors seriously as civil society actors is just as important as taking any other civil society actors seriously in cooperation with local religious actors and it is often emphasized and eric's has mentioned this too that they have a brighter legitimate in legitimacy in african contexts however this is of course depends as a focus on um religious groups which are well known or have larger membership risks to ignore the social political context of religiously plural societies where religious groups fight for political recognition and we're asserting legitimacy or questioning the other one's legitimacy is part of everyday business and where access to international cooperation resources is an important currency and the struggle for local recognition so in religiously poorer context it may be sometimes more fruitful to find out who is excluded and marginalized instead of supporting the dominant legitimate groups and religious leaders coming to my fifth point um it's also what um eric already mentioned that many organizations um do not only represent local civil society but are closely connected to large international transnational bodies with their very own objectives of aims be it the catholic church or turkish state affiliated islamic ngos two more minutes yes thank you and to use religious authorities and organizations as facilitators or to attribute more legitimacy to them than to local political structures for example could also undermine the sovereignty of the state in the long term and ibrahimovic also a doctoral student in this religious engineering project works on turkish soft power in niger and and he shows how government agency used the cooperation with turkish religious organizations working in india not only to make development work more sustainable but also to better reach the local population to reinforce their political and cultural influence and this is how i come to my fifth point and in the framework of development economic development in the framework of development economic environmental social issues are increasingly discussed um as moral duties that's my impression so this again can contribute i think to long-standing patterns of a kind of what what has been termed the deep politicization of development the turn to religion increases the moral turn in development or maybe it's even a moralizing term value-based development as it is sometimes called can imply the donors support only those who subscribe to the same values this does not leave much room to hear the voices of those which use the religious idiom to express criticism of social and political conditions and to develop the colonial alternatives to development so in my view one should not assume moral consensus just because a religious tradition also emphasizes helping the poor or saving the planet to be to be very oversimplifying but rather discuss how to deal with different points of view and different ways of seeing the world and different ways of transforming society thank you very much yeah thank you very much and thanks again for all the three inputs um now we come to the responses and i wouldn't invite us the first discussion please thank you very much i'm delighted to be here speaking as a practitioner i am having a background in islamic studies and i'm delighted to see my old professor ulrich ripstock also in the audience but i'm speaking here as a practitioner from a governmental implementing organization gizad and working in the field of religion and development for more than specifically in this field for more than five years um i share the importance of the topic and also the ambivalence it brings in and specifically when we talk about sensitive topics like family planning contraception we see that there is also a back side of a coin but i would like um to to start with our role here um as a governmental agency um obviously we as he is that we also work with religious actors only since five years we have so in a systematic way and um you mentioned the difficulties and challenges with working with the diverse landscape of religious actors and whether it should be not our role to work and deal with a different point of views i agree that this will be very fruitful at the same time there are criterias for working together with religious actors with faith-based organizations when it comes to our kind of cooperation as a governmental body or um as an organization with is working for the german government as an implementing organization so um i think the balancing of the sdgs and the norms and values is really key for us and um i found it very interesting i would like to start with the first speaker damaris when you mention the challenges specifically this is posing to the situation of girls in kenya and in africa and i see specifically the background of the androcentric interpretation of religious texts and the role of men and women which is dominantly focusing on the male perspective which is shaping here the discourse and for us to to to prevent this kind of agenda we would like to seek um as a standard in the selection for partners and actors due respect for human rights standards and principles but also a clear development orientation it can't be our goal to work with agents who claim to have a moral high ground or to know what is best or better for the people on the ground and certainly at the same time we as a development organization when we come into a context we don't know best we have to ask and seek for information there has to be religious actors mapping there has to be an approach of do no harm to actually seek for a best solution on the ground and um we have um [Music] these kind of tensions which are need to be taken into account so the scope conditions which are mentioned for how to work with religious actors i would say are these um where we find common ground like where we see that we as a development actors and religious actors as being part of a bigger frame are working towards the same goal then we can do this kind of work but there are these risks and these unintended consequences which were mentioned by um if and i feel that on my personal maybe a personal note um that if working in development cooperation obviously one has to see the roots of development cooperation in missionary work and also in colonial work um saying this on a personal note and therefore i think we really have to reflect on this and how we can do better when we want to work on this subject better life for all of us in the future um i think i would like to end on this point and maybe continue later on yeah thank you very much um so i hand over to our second discussant daniel bogey please yes thank you very much and i want to thank the presenters for a very rich and very relevant discussion topic we have had this afternoon um you know talking about religion and development is i think quite relevant in the movements that we are in and i'm giving my intervention from both a researcher and practitioner point of view um before i went to the academia not a long time ago i've been working with the development of community-based organizations and involved in various development processes both at the local and the national and national levels and so issues to do with the millennium development goals sustainable development goals and you know these other processes that are uh impact on developments per se more from the community level perspective um i've been quite involved in that but then also in my research work um uh including the uh my doctoral work that i did i was also looking at this in the sectionalities under overlapping issues between the role of the church and the development actors in the community that i was looking at and the massage community where the the churches continue to play a very significant role when it comes to uh development and uh you know being consulted by development actors and you know stepping in as leaders and making decisions at the community level and also the government are proactively uh engaging the church um more so in kenya we have done a lot of my work but also this is the same across many african countries and from the presenters i think we have received a very diverse and a very rich view and analysis of what is transpiring when the state and uh when the church and and development actors including the state uh you know collide or intersect and um i think as the first speaker damaris raised a lot of very valid and very good uh poems as uh you know looking from the perspective of the girls and the gender issues in kenya and what to role the church is playing uh not only that but the faith-based actors generally but i think uh mainly the church has been very proactive in that area and uh i would like to uh you know just pick a few uh issues um in uh we also have a very big role of uh of uh in as much as a church or faith-based organizations and and and the government policies are sometimes colluding when it's con when there's convenience and you know sometimes also there's there's a conflict of the same you know occasionally they come together to agree as they have done during the copy 19 case uh blaming the girls you know and blaming the parents for for the issues of pregnancies and all that um you know what so they sometimes converge but sometimes they also conflict uh in many cases and yeah we see uh the government sometimes blaming uh the churches uh you know of uh or faith-based organizations of maybe take doing the mandate that is not theirs or stepping their mandates stepping on the borders of what is supposed to be done by the government but also we see the faith-based organizations doing this as a charity or filling the gap and the vacuum that the government has failed to do uh and this is not only on matters of social interest like a sexuality and the girls uh moralization of the muslims putting it but also on the matters of development um the the faith-based organizations coming in to say we are doing what the government has failed to do and uh and and most of the time the government feels that politically they have been it's credited in in the eyes of the communities of the waters of the citizens that they have done the church is doing what's not supposed to be doing and quite often we have seen uh sanctioning and uh of of of the activities by the by the state um especially in the current trends where uh especially not in canada and in other african countries we are in the era of terrorism and all that and so there's a lot of sanctions by the government on how these faith-based organizations are funded how much they receive what they are supposed to do or what they are not supposed to do uh so that is one aspect of the conflicts that arise but then also we see a convergence or uh you know they're coming together at a point of convenience uh during the politicization and the election nearing periods uh where of course the governments and the states use faith-based organizations and churches to advance their political agenda and in the recent trend uh you will also observe and i don't know how maybe uh the the presenters have integrated that in uh especially in africa where there is um the issues of corruption because i haven't had that in any of the of the presenters uh how maybe uh in the issue of corruption how they said there's a an emerging trend where politicians take money to these faith-based organizations in form of offerings in form of gifts uh you know and and many people and political analysts and other citizens have been allowed in that this is another form of money laundering where money stolen from corruption deals are passed through the church for cleansing sort of and the church and faith-based organizations who have always been like the prefects of over development or of the government work would be muzzled you know their voice from uh shouting out of any ills and any injustices in there in the in the government and this is also in to a greater extent affect the development agenda uh of of any country um and so these are key issues that have been imagined and these are really the current uh uh trends that are happening when we are looking at religion and the development in developing countries but this also we should be alive to the historical continuities uh especially in africa where we are emerging from uh uh uh uh from the history of of of colonization and we know the role that the church has played sometimes to advance the colonial agendas and so this has also in so many in many places and maybe that i don't know whether whether the findings of eric and these quantitative findings are also found the difference is the context of the roles of these churches of these failures organizations in different regions because it is highly local and highly contextualized because in other areas like where i've done my studies my research in mars island they just recently agreed to join uh you know the the church that all the the faith-based organizations and and use that as a platform for development because of the of the of the history that they have had with them during the colonial times the fear of losing their cultures and and so the the the in africa which is quite heterogeneous as eric had said um these faith-based organizations are are performing different functions at different scales at different levels depending on the region and the communities that they are working in so in some areas uh it's quite advanced in the areas that they have worked in in some areas it is quite as recent as few years ago that they have started to try to make uh inroads into uh the environments that they are working on you have two more minutes you have two more minutes okay so um okay maybe i can i can i can end it there but but by maybe maybe the last point as i ended and pick it from there again is um when we are talking of religion engineering and this is the point that was uh was raised by spies um i think it's also important maybe to look at the extent to which uh um the extent to which religion has shaped development and also the way that the extent which development has shaped religion so it is whose engineering in the sense that also development i think have also shaped the thinking and the theory of religious organizations and you know move away from the faith and belief systems uh towards the contemporary development theories as we know being shaped by other international processes discussions and uh and and and the discourse that's happening at a larger scale so um i think there's a lot of shaping going both ways i don't know what the extent this is happening but maybe it's the work that uh invest and and the colleagues will continue to be established thank you yes thank you very much and uh thanks again for all those thought-provoking contributions and also thank you for respecting our time frame um now there's the opportunity for the contributors to to react to each other if you if you want to um damaris eric feel free to to respond to the responses after that we can open the broader floor yeah i i think i can go first uh thank you to our discussions uh i think you raised very critical points i want to respond to uh nabella um not really a response but there's something that you say that picked my my mind um you know how uh development how how religionships development and how um development is shaped by religion and and i think it's important that when you think we think about international development we also need to rethink about the role of um international organizations and the kind of impact that they are having in africa uh faith-based organizations and i'll demonstrate that with the examples which i was not able to do in in my long presentation uh in in in one of the latter studies i did for the center for reproductive uh rights and one of the things that was very clear to me is that the resistance of uh faith-based actors on uh gender issues under productive health uh rights especially reproductive health technologies on comprehensive sexually uh sexuality education in kenya and in africa in the eight countries that i studied was that this was also being shaped by developments in the in in you know can i call them evangelical uh conservative conservatives in in in america and the rest of europe and i give examples you know uh hoping um no one is going to look for me and shoot me um i'll name a few um citizen go which is uh madrid-based uh faith-based organizations works very actively in kenya in tanzania in uganda uh in mozambique in malawi and zambia and zimbabwe uh to ensure that these conservative interpretations you call we call it entrocentric interpretation of scriptures is moved into women's bodies and citizens go has worked with faith-based organization and faith-based lobby groups to take the government to coach because of some certain textbooks that are being taught in primary schools because they promote sexuality or homosexuality or because they'll make kids immoral or that sort of thing and you know and and i have been an observer of these issues um we have marie's top clinics in kenya and lately in the east african region which provide a reproductive health support and technologies to especially vulnerable women and we had a citizen go family watch international all international faith-based uh faith-based allied lobbies very powerful bodies you know petitioning up to the uu and up to the african uh union and locally working with local faith-based organizations and lobbies to actually close um marie's top and they carried you know they they did so much money that is coming into kenya especially where i'm familiar with uh from from citizen go from family watch international from doctors uh catholic doctors that you know sponsor very expensive um what do you call them they erected these large posters by the roadside say abortion is mother and you know whipping up public emotions against you know some of the things that uh they are against and so when we think of international uh development we must also think about the role of international faith allied faith-based lobbies and their impact on the african continent and and how they work together with uh local faith actors uh to ensure that they continue to entrench uh some of these teachings that are completely harmful to women and and gender development and um yeah corruption you know by just did an article on the elephant about church and money and politicians taking corruption money to church to be sanctified and how that is also shaping the voice of the church and also development in church so that there are all these dynamics that we could never exhaust here but i think this conversation has started um you know um i think this what this does is that it sets up real good conversations around uh some of those issues that uh are critically important thank you thank you yeah are there more responses to the responses please sure um happy to follow up and thank you both nabila and daniel for for terrific comments i like those a lot um nabila i'm super happy to hear that the giz is now putting religion and religious actors high on the agenda even though you mentioned it's only since five years i believe um which to me says that we should also not be too strict and have some patience with development organizations and the gis for example of learning and developing their ways of how to deal with this right so i think that's very positive and good development at the same time though i would just be curious and push you a little bit towards the the moral values and the moral compass that that you mentioned yourself the common moral ground that needs to be there between development agencies and fbos um and whether that's fully developed by the gis and other development agencies right because at the end of the day to give you an example if you have a small scale fbo that's doing terrific work um and that shares those those values and you have a bigger nationwide fbos that doesn't share those values to the same degree but would be more effective in in shaping development what do you do as the giza right who do you partner with and if you choose to partner with the smaller one are you ready to make bigger investments to help them scale up their um their uh territory and their activities for example at the same time i think it's crucial and that will be found for example in burkina that fbos should not really be overburdened with too many additional demands by external actors and international development agencies so i think it's crucial to pick up on the expertise and the local knowledge of fbos and help building on that rather than asking you're great at conflict mediation but can you also do something about climate change and gender equality and so on and so forth so i think that's another crucial point to consider but really developing and being transparent about this uh moral compass to found that moral grounds um is really crucial and something that that needs um future work in the upcoming years and month um and then also what what daniel said about the state sanctioning what it perceives as misbehavior by face-based organizations i think is really key and comes back to what we found regarding the state being either a partner for corporation or a spoiler of sustainable development i think that also speaks to the position of external international actors meaning that if you find a highly repressive state think about whether you want to partner with that state or with fbos and send money for example rather to promising fbos rather than to this state and also uh the issue of corruption that daniel mentioned i think that is an issue that for example in my work in my um in my latest book i encountered when looking at fbos in nigeria for example where some of the fbos suffered a big blow by being involved in corruption with basically destroyed their legitimacy among local populations but also cause problems for international actors cooperating with those fbos so the the issue of corruption i think is something to take into account and speaks again to the need of really taking into account local facts local knowledge and having open communication with local fbos and choosing whom to partner with and whom not to partner with and a final point that i want to make which i think speaks to what daniel calls development shaping shaping religion and religion shaping development is um it's not only about the states and fbos cooperating but also the relationship between fbos amongst each other right because they are competing amongst themselves as well some of them are of course cooperating some of them are in competition and that competition is partly spurred by demands and requests of international development donors so if there is a way to create more cooperation both among fbos on the local level and among development agencies on the international level i think that would be a fruitful avenue for fostering the cooperation on both the local and the international level and is something that needs more work in the future and i'll stop here thank you okay thank you very much also from my side many thanks to the the discussions and your contribution very very helpful and also thanks eric and demira so i thought some um i think i have very similar points i would and i wanted to take up um actually also on what um you just just mentioned this this idea to um to what extent uh development has been shaped by religions and so this is of course also a part and i think this is also what what maybe nabila mentioned when she when she mentioned the colonial and the missionary context um but but for our project and for us it would be very interesting also to see um how is not this only done in the past how do um religious organizations actors shape development um thinking in the past but how do they do this today and um for for me this would be really a question um coming back to this finding the common ground so how much room for maneuver is there really to to take in more ideas different ideas maybe also maybe also contradictory ideas um of maybe um development and you yeah eric you mentioned common moral ground i think nabila you are only talked about from any common ground so i would be really interested in about this moral dimension and if this is really a way forward for development work it should be so if this not if this is not too uh too restricting um really to come with this kind of value-based package and does it not narrow um our or the the approaches of um for example um western cooperation agencies um like the kids are um for for cooperating and really making room for religious actors and other civil society actors of course to really shape development thinking so yeah maybe i'll leave it here thank you yeah thank you very much now that's the interesting conversation starting between the contributors but i think at this point we should also invite um the audience to to join the discussion and um i would like to um to invite you to raise your digital hands in order to show that you want to to contribute something um but there are um already two questions that um have arrived here via the chat and i i'm just going to read them out and then um yeah we continue with those who yeah just uh already raising their hands here so there were two questions by allah she asked do you cooperate with the all-african conference of churches the largest christian faith-based organization in all of africa based in nairobi which has just recently started a sustainable population program and is organizing conferences on that issue including reproductive rights of girls and women and there's another question by anne would not negotiate eric scholenberg the danish government supports faith-based organizations in all of africa with um [Music] programs such as pokemon program for christian muslim relations in africa can you name other faith actors who are involved in 4b that matters maybe you go first yeah um yeah so i'm familiar with the work of the old african uh conference of churches i know that recently they held a conference on a harmful theologist i was not part of that i wasn't invited so um i know i know they do some amazing work and uh my my presentation focus on um the negative tensions but there's also i i i also know number a number of faith-based organizations that really do amazing work around gender empowerment so yeah i'm i'm alive to all those tensions but i haven't personally uh walked to the old african conference of churches what i do know and do is that i collaborate with people who are allied to the all african conference of churches eric yeah i'm not 100 sure whether i got the question right so thanks with uh north nagal and i'm not familiar with the program you mentioned by the danish government but thanks for the um for hinting me to that i think i should check it out but um i i would be happy to send you a whole list of faith-based organizations that we worked on so please just shoot me an email and i'm happy to provide you this for burkina faso and sudan and ethiopia and other countries um but i i honestly have to check out the program by the danish government that you mentioned so um i'll do my homework and would be happy to continue the conversation with you thank you now before we continue with first i have to um ask those lure for another commenting question that arrived account you're muted okay the classical sorry so this is from this question is from shumit and speaker is not working so he asked me to read out it's a question to eric um would your research also analyze whether christianity is playing different roles in promoting economic development in western european countries and countries in sub-saharan africa in other words was max weber right in arguing protestantism values tend to promote capitalism and eventually economic growth can we find evidence supporting this when it comes to africa that was it all right should i quickly respond or okay perfect so um i'm gonna have to disappoint you because our project is not gonna compare western europe directly with uh sub-saharan africa or countries in sub-saharan africa um however we we will do further analysis on on whether for example the the share of of christians or muslims in a country does matter for development so religious demographics for example um however we're not going to do a thorough historical analysis that goes back to the deep roots of of christianity and islam in in multiple african countries i'm afraid so um i don't think this answer is satisfactory for you because i can't provide the definitive answer but i can only promise you that we are further gonna drill down on the specifics or potential specifics that we may or may not find between larger christian influences and larger um islamic influences in some of the countries that we are looking at but this is further down the roads and i'm very happy to share those insight with you either personally via email or through um a future upcoming event okay so thank you um please yeah thank you very much um for having me i'm very excited about the debate and thrilled to see the variety of participants in this webinar um i would like to raise a question a bit critical because my feeling is why do we really focus on fbos if it comes to common moral ground and let out governments and other ngos who are under the same challenges of corruption also in germany actually and we also have to realize that to a very large extent development cooperation is yeah if i may say so buying actually some trust sometimes via funding those kind of projects instead of developing the common ground first which we should do actually and that's one of my biggest criticism to my own tradition in after 30 years in development cooperation to look into um a development that develops common ground first agrees on values you know the sector program um when abila and i were very much involved is called values religion and development and unfortunately the bmz skipped the terms values i believe these values have to be fought on a daily base for human rights driven and all that and then one can start common project in development cooperation but this is my personal um opinion i would love to raise the question why do we not include governments and ngos secular world into the uh debate when it comes to allegations concerning corruption thank you very much to all panelists actually yeah thank you i suggest that just anyone who wants to um respond raises their hand and then we could just continue with the with the other um hands and and the order they they were raised so um thank you for that um or yeah if i want to react immediately um yes i said i just just should mention that that actually this is the basic idea of our project so that's what we what we call religious engineering or this work on development that it's not restricted to religious organizations and religious actors but many actors who sometimes refer to religion but are not themselves seeing themselves as religious actors for example so but of course um and this is actually the main point i i wanted to make that's so let's discuss first what are what are the this consensus we're talking about and what are these values and so on and not to to use or instrumentalize uh religious actors and fbos just to to um work on the approaches we already uh have at hand that's just a yeah an addition to thank you for for the comments actually yeah thank you ava now younis caramara so thank you chair thank you chair for this opportunity um i would like to begin by thanking i'm trying to turn my video but it won't work anyway i'll do without it so well it's what i would like to thank uh the participants uh uh the presenters and the respondents i mean for generating quite a number of interesting ideas which is quite enlightening so thank you very much secondly i would like to make a few uh question comments and ask one or two questions um ordinarily religion has functions and dysfunctions so what eric has said that there is this evidence either way except for him he found it the evidence rather weak in terms of positive correlationship between religion and sustainable development but that's something we always expect that religion you have functions and dysfunctions and in that sense i would like to request even space to make a few comments about the statement that a moral turn doesn't make development sustainable because i would expect that it would and it would not it would make development sustainable and it would make development sustainable depending on context and depending on issues in the context of covid for example maybe in africa in the context of corvid maybe in germany it would be different but just make some few comments to clarify that statement and then jamal is uh pulsital thank you for your presentation you kind of ended up by saying that we need to focus more on sex education and sex as sexually productive health rights and i got taken a little back because some studies that you are doing here in murder rate among adolescence in informal settlements suggested that it's not that these adolescents who are very vulnerable to gender-based violence in the context of kovid including pregnancies which you soweby talked about were not ignorant they they knew quite a bit about sex education and reproductive health and it's not that sex education therefore be helpful and then i'm thinking rights to have rights is one thing but to fight for those rights and ensure they are not infringed on is a different thing altogether we found many of their daughters and girls are living in we were working in informal settlement so we realized that with covid uh young girls and daughters and girls who are trapped at home with i don't use these terms but it's it's rather offensive but male predators you know like you are at home there's not nowhere you're going because there's coffee then there's lockdown and you're in this one-roomed house it's the bedroom it's the kitchen it's the sitting room it's everything and it is in that context that sexual abuse would take place so you are like no matter how much you give these girls rights no matter how much education you give this this is not going to work you probably want to have a multi-pronged approach to this thing and in the context of what i've said up to this point i would say i would ask any of the panelists and even the respondents to say what they think about inner sustainable goals because along the way i had mentioned of relationships for example i had the issue of rights and you can't talk rights you can't talk morality you can talk very many things without thinking about inner sustainable development goals thank you very much ava i think you want to do it yeah thanks so much so um of course um this is um also to to make a point i said that a moral term will not help but i see i see two dimensions in it and so the first is that when we talk or we shift the discussion to values and moral grounds and so on so so there is a tendency to de-politicize the discussion and i think i think this is not actually helpful for a development debate where where western approaches and the western world is very much in discussion now and thinking about the colonial approaches so i think um i think this is a political discussion and to shift it to to the morality to the sphere of morality and values it does not help really to to bring this yeah to promote this this more political discussion and and the other point um when i say that a moral term won't help is actually the point of vicinity already raised in my understanding at least um so there is this tendency then then that maybe a donors or international development agencies um support only actors who subscribe to the same values and the the predefined values actually and there's no discussion about what are these values and so there is something like an assumed consensus and this is actually only putting up moral pressure and maybe in the end leading to hypocrisy telling everybody yes of course um we support these kind of values so i think a moral turn somehow fails more or is um covers more of the of the challenges and problems then then it's really helpful to to discuss them thank you yeah um and i can jump in um to the question asked by eunice younis thank you thank you very much and it's wonderful to see you again after a long time um yeah i i have no doubt that the work you carried out with vulnerable girls in uh elderly um you know led to that kind of results but i also know uh from my own experiences working with bannerable girls in mas island is that many girls don't know what happens to their bodies because they have not had first of all sex is a taboo subject uh in the community in which i work i work in people don't discuss about uh there is not discuss matters to do with sexuality with their children um of course fathers would not even dare mothers uh don't um and so these girls especially in masailand and and let me just tell you one thing one of my the biggest um downside for me in 2020 is that i lost so many girls under my care to uh teenage pregnancy which normally means that those guys would not come back to school so it's very personal for me um the thing the thing that i i i realize as a researcher of uh uh religion is that and and and going through the the kind of messaging church messaging religious uh leaders messaging around uh sexuality uh and and impurity culture particularly with pentecostals that i work with there was actually no evidence in my uh my study that those uh moral messages prevented teenage pregnancy or or prevented uh you know some of those tensions that i have talked about studies from the u.n particularly in asia um and and even if i can send you that document uh that uh also suggests that while religious messages did not um um you know support uh teenage pregnancy prevention of teenage pregnancy the reverse is true that comprehensive sexuality education enables young pupils and adolescent girls to gain their tools to understand their reproductive health and to understand what is happening in their bodies but what i found is that uh there is a moralization there is a spiritualization and there is a kind of a demonization of what is happening to young girls and nobody is speaking about what those girls are going through in their own bodies and no one is empowering them to be able to understand that so that's why i found attention units and uh i i i know it's it's different for for girls in upper middle class families uh in towns but for girls in rural areas where there isn't even i mean the distance to school is like sometimes 25 kilometers that is a different scenario that i'm dealing with so i appreciate that and i'm going to look at that from those perspectives but studies also are coming up with all these kinds of uh issues that we are grappling with you quickly add-on see thank uh just briefly on uh eunice's cameras point and what um damaris just mentioned i think it's i was presently surprised i have to say that uh our quantitative analysis showed that poor freedom of religion or belief is correlated with higher degrees of gender equality right i think that's good news because often times the argument is through greater freedom of religion or belief we can multiply the forces in a society that work towards sustainable development and there is at least preliminary evidence that that seems to be the case for gender equality and i think that's particularly challenging more negative or conservative arguments that often claim religion and religious organization promote only conservative values when it comes to gender equality but on the other hand our qualitative data also shows for example that in burkina faso there are really great efforts by fbos to educate women and young girls about their rights about um about pregnancies and so on and so forth and i think that's something to pick onto and also potentially a topic that is not on the screen of international development agencies that much so far when it comes to fbos and respond those who provide responses um i would like just to comment on the question raised by daniel regarding the question of corruption in my ongoing work with a local salafi association in nigeria i i realized that really this association is working like it's working to to to change to change the mainstream of being civil servant in nature for example to fight against corruption by referring to the ethics of being sunnah what does it mean to be a which is a kind of moral compass which if i can use borrow the term by by eric um so it is like this moral compass that they are using to to to sensitize and to educate people through this lens of therapy that usps has just presented um so i i can i can complete by saying that um these local actors are aware of this question of correction and they are they are doing what i i call um changing from outside perspective like acting on the behavior of people by referring to a certain moralities informed by some religious religious identity in order to to change the society um another question a question i would like to raise it is addressed to damaris um [Music] at the beginning of her talk she was asking under which conditions um fifth best organization activities can be sustainable so i would like to ask her if she can provide me with some example about activities that can be seen as sustainable yeah and according to hero research thank you very much you want to respond the most yeah and i don't even have an answer in my fingertips uh i i know for sure that um the history of democratization in kenya especially and i think the larger african sub-saharan african region is tied to the role of churches and civil society in ensuring that african churches uh i mean african uh nations uh gained uh democracy um also also that many of the faith-based organizations um you know from the 80s onwards the 80s to uh i think i think uh to the tail end of the 90s were really the voice of the voiceless and and the conscience of the nation and there was an element in which you felt kenyans felt that as long as uh faith-based leaders were able to to speak about corruption speak about democracy speak about human rights you know speak about you know uh you know services public services and and that sort of thing um i think i think history will remember that as one uh particular role in which a faith-based organization really contributed to the democratization of uh post-independence uh countries in africa and and i i can speak about many others um risa i think that's your name uh and um i think i can send you an article on uh the role of faith-based organizations in uh development uh in kenya and so probably i did answer you but at least i said something that i can pick your interest thank you thank you nabila you had to worry for quite a time it's all right um i wanted uh to thank uh firstly damaris for sharing her experience as an activist and also as in research on this very sensitive and and also very some topic of how girls are yeah treated in in many parts of the world and how religion plays a role in this and i was probably too diplomatic saying that there is an androcentric worldview and therefore this happens but um obviously we have a problem here and um for a reason unfpa is lacking money and um this is not only when we talk with faith-based organizations but also in politics um the body of women is also always a mean of politicization and um i would like to depict shortly um as i mentioned earlier eric you said the german government is working and i'm actually said it in you we're referring to the german government the ministry of um development corporation is working on religion development since 2015 and um we were not the first or the german government was not the first who was working on the subject the world bank the you and um there were many institutions who were figuring that religion plays a really important role um and it isn't very ambivalent role but we have to start a conversation on a systemic and strategic level and therefore the the sector program where i was working for more than five years was founded um in order to advise the german ministry of development corporation and at the same time there was a multi-actors partnership founded its name is part and part is a monty access partnership where we have governmental bodies as well as as the world bank and a lot of fbos and academia who come together to discuss these important questions we're also raising here today and the the need to actually have this larger conversation about religion development um as i feel was sensed within our project was that their religion is there and we cannot just we have to acknowledge this as a fact that whether we like it or not it's there and it's also here there in germany and we have to yeah handle this and when we come to development cooperation um it's important to leave no one behind therefore many people they are affected they think because of religion a certain way and faith actors religious organizations they come into display and it is needed to consider them and see them in their in the whole range they're offering in all the different aspects they bring in and i find it very important to say um what you said already that obviously the higher ground i mean there's no higher ground neither for governmental organizations nor for um faith-based organizations or civil society i think it's always the same we it's the questions uh how do we work do we promote for good and uh we should judge by this and um working for giz when you were asking about what kind of values what is the common ground for us i mean obviously we work as a governmental organization and we have a mission statement and there you can see as a federal company we are guided by the principles of our societal order and the interests of germany and this is how we operate and obviously we advance by this also development policy which isn't which is supported by the german government and then we have the framework of the sustainable development goals um but i think it's also yeah maybe important to to state this more clearly that um yeah this is where we come from and this is why we work in this context thank you so much thank you um there are two more questions i suggest that we um combine them because we're running out of time now but there should be room for for each of them to to be a poster and then um maybe a couple of minutes left for others to to respond react to it so first um dorothy kitser center and then hans spitzer please thank you very much for this opportunity and thank you all for the team for organizing this important event on the topic which i've been really longing for i come originally from uganda but i stay in german and uh this is a topic which i also wanted to to organize with my team chatting to uganda and i think uh this is an encouragement for me to organize uh it in the future near future we work uh we we do okay open events on san diego sustainable development goals um oh i just want to comment and thank don davis for what he presented what he said or especially on the girl child what's really happening and what i'm going to to mention about is the the over observation which have been things which have been observing for a long time most of my life uh when i was at the age of 17 i was in the school which is a catholic school and this count of schools was uh was under was under church which uh where peace used to meet uh different times and at the time i see i saw it that the the church did a lot for development but the other hand they do a lot for living keeping people in poverty in on one side uh just not the church as stuff but maybe the leaders personal people who the morals i would say the morals of some leaders uh this is the church where the priests at one time you had to go for holidays the girls it was a boarding school the girls have to travel and we have to sleep over at at the priestess place because i didn't go for holidays at home but i had to go to my friend's place we we slept over at each christmas place and united was just party and some of these cows really one of them hides with me in the room said she's not going to be parted because what's going on there she doesn't like it and just to notice what was really going on was not really good and these are the uh the leaders or the priests some of the priests who are even paying school fees for these girls so the parents trust them but what goes with the girls was really very good i'm just giving this as an example the age of 17 and what's this and was really disturbing later on have notes also in the church what also talked about the man of god which are commonly called in uh in africa in germany i haven't really seen that much but uh in africa you hear man of god but what some of them what they are going through or what they do with the girls it's all women it's really really not acceptable this rights talking about means by some of them they don't know about their rights so always talk about the rights the girls have to know to be told about their rights some of them they don't know the rights that they can say no thinking of the man of god had said something so they think this person they go on this social only they work with they use words that anyone could believe what he says right and whatever they have to do and that's fine it's very wrong and you find that most of these girls some of them don't make it they end up being with pregnancy or with so many other things even dropping out of school but so many things happen to these girls um that is uh for me it is uh other developing brings also to underdeveloping in the society it be especially when these people have to do a lot with a large group of people uh another thing we should also note the church also lobbying some uh industrial products for example uh genetically the genetically changed acids are usually brought in africa and most of them they are given out to the churches and the church give out to the farmers farmers know normally in the villages it is so that they they they keep some seeds to grow them the next season so in the next season because they are they probably the streets are genetically changed they don't reproduce they can't they can't use them again so they are constraining people the people will not be having uh they and they're not told what you what is what the defeats are good because they really bring they bring a good produce but these things are not really good as they original so that's one thing another thing is also the medicine so many churches also lobbied for vaccination they use churchgoers to come to be fascinated from different uh things but some of the things which have been not is uh like women that are not even told that the boxing which they are taking is uh not to to to to for for uh for family planning so they end up having problems even at home being chest the traditionally some of them they don't produce and they have problems with the families but they don't they don't give fast children and this is some part some of these things has been not some churches so the church does a lot but the leaders the morals uh they have there must be a hand of check and this is not there it will really be good if there is a check on uh on the different churches and their behaviors and the leaders so these morals also has really to be checked on i just wanted to mention that thank you thank you very much for pointing this out yeah so we we're actually run out of time but i think i i would like to um to also include uh speed second and again and then we have to conclude yeah good afternoon very interesting and the presentations from kenya from byrod and from humber gigger and i see and understand there's a warning to over stressing on the moral turn and stolenback said we should not you know overburden the fbos and thank you very much for that i want to pick on it and to ask is it possible to cooperate with religious actors or fbos if you want so without theological discourse if it is intended to use the transformative potential of faith i put the question from the background of being uh working for with the evangelical church in germany for years in the development cooperation so i'm a church man and i just want to say a word you know to my predecessor i'm upset as well with the misuse of the word of god but i'm upset with the domination which we see and in churches and so churches and religious groups are not homogeneous we have to differentiate different shade and to look who we are cooperating with and is it possible to discern actually without applying theological discourse thank you for this comment and now our last contribution um you are muted again yeah muted okay and now okay yeah that's fine all right so that i just brief comments in the form of a conclusion and probably um providing some insights on the wafer to help the the three presenters and the team continue crafting these um very important but uh very complex topic as well because both religion and development and and are quite complex topics and both of them are really contested uh in different perspectives um and and they didn't ask what you saw is a sustainable development uh makes it even you know add a little bit of complexity into also the topic and um this has been captured by eunice uh camara when uh she was trying to um uh you know show that the difficulty of guaranteeing maybe a girl's safety in in in in in in in places that are informal i mean informal settlements and other another routes to the element of development and uh and and we want to ask ourselves maybe you know what's developmentally whose perspectives i mean whose terms are we defining that that term uh you know i think that is very very critical uh because what could be development of some others might not be development to others depending on where the context that we are defining that and the relationship between the development and religion and maybe eric in his work will continue probably to tell us where how maybe sometimes if uh there is high religiosity in places with law development and vice versa and what would be you know what what what contributes to that because where there's a lot of poverty there's a lot of you know tendency of having a lot of religious beliefs and all that the beliefs that that would that believe and that faith will take you out of poverty but when sustainable development is achieved as we see maybe in the western world then the level of religious beliefs tends to go down i don't know how you can probably make that uh comparison and then maybe also the role of the private sector when it comes to development um because when you say development actors we tend to look at the ngos and the government but also we have the private sector that is increasingly coming into the arena of development and how this also impacts on the media's uh you know faith-based organizations and then the issue of culture as i mentioned earlier i would say when we are talking about values and morals uh you know the the where do we place the moral so especially from the indigenous people's perspectives the assumption we're making here is probably the the beneficiaries of development are all maybe subscribed to certain form of faith but we know that there's a huge chunk of communities that are culturalists that believe in traditional way of doing this where do we place that in this uh discussing these discussions and then again literally uh still maybe when we talk of faith-based organizations maybe also another comparative of maybe the islam faith-based organization and the christian faith-based organizations we know that conducts in africa varys a lot because we know islam and islam based organizations probably in the north africa existed law for a long time probably even before colonialism but we know that the church is a recent phenomenon may be coming with or slightly after or during the process of colonialism so maybe those are the the issues that i would want to point out um to be as food for that for the for the for the team to continue maybe thinking through as they craft together put together this very very important debate thank you thank you very much for this concluding remarks um i think this is definitely a discussion to be continued so i would not even try to sum it up now um but instead um thank again everyone for their wonderful contributions for this really um inspiring discussion um yeah many things thank you for staying with us for almost two hours and hope to see you again maybe even physically have a nice evening thank you thank you thank you thank you very much and the chair and and uh the discussions and i was it was really really wonderful and especially fresh peace to invest all the time and to have you around and on behalf of the cluster and the giga i'm looking forward to more interesting collaborations and formats and yeah thanks a lot you
Origins & context
- Title
- Panel Discussion: With the Help of God(s)? Religious Actors and Sustainable Development in Africa
- Language
- English
- Date
- February 24, 2022
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