The New Visibility of Religion in the Development Arena  

Introduction Contrary to the widespread tendency to relegate religion to the rank of reactionary forces, religious actors and ideas have always been vectors of social change and important in development initiatives in Africa – one only has to think of Catholic missions’ or Islamic elites’ engagement with education in colonial times (Cooper 2006; Brenner 2001). However, such engagements got increasingly unnoticed when modernization theories of development became dominant in the 1950s and 1960s..