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Paper short abstract:

Seeking attention in African traditional religion is the intersection of medicine and religion. Most priests/priestesses are healers, and the deities are known to be responsible for sickness and spatial equilibrium. In the future, will medicine be delineated from African traditional religion?

Paper long abstract:

We are looking at the future of the intersection of African traditional religion and medicine in Africa. Colonisation of medical practice in Africa is a factor responsible for the ongoing delineation of medicine and religion, yet both are prominent techniques of solving problems within African lifeworlds. Thus, they can be seen as two key inseparable phenomena. Owing to the intervention of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the relevance of traditional medicine for the advancement of human health, there is an increasing interest in the study of traditional African medicine. Steadily, therefore, studies in traditional African medicine have gradually delineated from the framework of religion. Given the religious pluralism of Africa, there are even assumptions that to divorce traditional religion from traditional medicine is imperative if it can be useful for the populace. Is traditional medicine “medicine” or “religion” in Africa. There is an entanglement, it is this entanglement of traditional religion and medicine that is responsible for the fact that many Christians and Muslims practice traditional religion surreptitiously by patronising traditional medicine practitioners. Developing this argument, the paper discusses the following questions: In the future of this intersection of African religion and medicine, will African medicine be totally separated from African religion in spite of the decolonisation agenda? Will it ever come to a moment when there will not be any need for delineation because one will subsume the other? What will be the effect of either of this on the practice of medicine and traditional religion in Africa?