Beyond Ethnicity: The Role of Religious Appeals in African Electioneering

• In Event: Elites and Religion: Offline and Online

Abstract

The role of religion in electoral politics in Sub-Saharan Africa is currently understudied. It is commonly perceived that religious identity is a relative non-factor in electoral decision-making (McClendon & Beatty Riedl 2019, 58). Many countries across the continent formally ban political parties from organising along religious lines, and making explicitly religious campaign appeals. However, the region has long experienced a fence instead of a wall in the separation between church and state. Actors, in secular and religious positions, make frequent and covert use of religious language and symbols, and readily supply their audiences with Biblical analogies (Takyi et al., 2010). Most recently, religion played a prominent role in the 2022 Kenyan elections, and even cast a long political shadow in the weeks of contestation following election day. Throughout the campaign, the candidates made overt religious appeals, such as publicly professing their religion or praying for victory. Although religion has had a consistent presence in the political arena in the country for decades, these overt public displays of their religious practice may present a change in Sub-Saharan African electoral campaigns and may call into question how dormant a social cleavage religion may truly be.

In this paper, we set out to analyse the use of religious rhetoric and signals by political leaders during recent national electoral campaigns in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. We collect and systematically code candidates’ social media communication, interviews in major media outlets, as well as campaign speeches to understand the timing, frequency and type of religious rhetoric and signals in election campaigns.

Authors

• Thomas Isbell

• Robert E Nyenhuis, California State University, Pomona