A person can bless those he loves and curse those he hates. Even someone with an evil spirit can use it to help a person he likes to succeed. Anyone who curses does it with bayie (witchcraft). If whatever the person may say happens, it is bayie. We call some people anogya [mouths of fire]….

In Africa’s new charismatic Christianity (what I previously referred to as contemporary Pentecostalism) prosperity in both its spiritual and material senses remains a major theme. This Christianity shares the supernatural worldview associated with traditional religion in which evil powers are held responsible for the problems that people face in life, including the failure to prosper materially. This much…

In my next two posts I’d like to explore the hypothesis that there is a strong relationship between the prevalence of witchcraft beliefs and accusations on the one hand and economic prosperity and social wellbeing on the other. In other words, in African societies where people experience socio-economic uplift, they tend to fear that envious…