When Bisi Akomolafe, a small-scale businesswoman, wanted to buy a second-hand car at a dealership shop in Lagos, she took a car expert along. Upon conducting thorough inspection of the engines of the fleet of second-hand cars, the mechanic settled for a red Toyota Highlander SUV. But Akomolafe opted not to follow the expert’s advice, a choice that had nothing to do with the quality of it. Instead, her decision sprang from the shimmering red colour of the car, which, to her, meant a hound of bad luck. Against the advice of her mechanic, she plumped for a grey car, claiming to have dreamt about the good luck embedded in the colour. But barely six months after its purchase, the car began to give her problems, and she eventually flung it at a give-away price.
Just like Akomolafe, Lola Taiwo, an entrepreneur, considers superstitious signs before taking any business decision. Whenever she steps out of her house and sees a woman, she takes it as a sign that the business venture for that day would not be profitable. Ever reliant on this unscientific method, Taiwo has jettisoned several business ideas that could perhaps have fetched her money. “Seeing a woman first thing in the morning whenever I go out is a sign of bad luck for the business. So why waste my resources on what I know would not be successful,” she says.
Akomolafe and Taiwo are two out of a sizable number of Nigerians whose decision-making processes are anchored in superstitious beliefs. This group of people do not take a dim view of this approach. Instead, they are quick to consult pastors, imams and voodoo priests before they venture into any business to ascertain its profitability, when simple feasibility studies would have sufficed. They also refuse to take economic decisions on the remotest suspicion of any form of enchantment from a suspected witch, even if it could have fetched them a tidy profit.
This perspective is however widespread, even making deep in-roads into the specialised world of professionals. Investors and traders in stock and bond market equally turn to voodoo priests for forecast on future prices in spite of the plethora of financial metrics available to them. Policemen consult juju priests to determine if a culprit is guilty instead of employing forensic techniques. Doctors advise patients to go to traditional healers and miracle grounds for healings due to a lack of diagnostic understanding of some particular ailments.
This approach snakes through every sector of the country like a polluted river, elevating good luck charm over innovation; esteeming divination over data, prizing divine intervention over scientific man-made solutions. While there is a dearth of studies on the effect of this assembly of decisions spurred by superstitious inclinations, the aggregate consequence is bound to hurt the economy.
But Nigeria is not alone. The whole of Africa is a melting pot of superstitious beliefs that shade into the fear of black magic and supernatural spirits, affecting the ways individuals make decisions to allocate economic resources. In Rwanda, women are discouraged from eating goat meat stemming from the belief that they would grow beards if they do so. Such belief cuts away almost half of the population from eating goats, with the attendant negative consequences to goat herders and the economy at large.
In some West African countries like Ghana, Mali and Nigeria, some young men believe that the quickest path to wealth is through ritual money magic. Entrepreneurship and hard work hold no allure for these young ones who would rather consult juju priests than start a small-scale business. These superstitious beliefs kill whatever crumbs of innovative spirit that is left in the youth, a stark contrast to the western world where many in their mid-twenties have founded businesses that have grown to become global multinationals.
In some South African countries, HIV is believed to be the result of witchcraft. Those who hold such belief would rather opt for a talisman than seek protection in condoms during sexual acts. Such beliefs have constituted a stumbling block in the region’s campaign to whittle down the high prevalence of the virus with the attendant negative economic consequences.
From the slums of Lagos to the high-rise towers in Pretoria to the lush golden sun-burnt savannah of Tanzania, superstition is central to Africa’s conception of fortune, development, illness and death. It is deeply stitched into the tapestry of a continent whose citizens believe that some particular type of humans has the capacity to turn into animals at night for the purposes of wreaking evil. This type of belief system has however hobbled the continent’s development despite the vast natural resources embedded in its bowel. It breeds a population that do not question archaic norms and beliefs. It fosters intellectual laziness in citizens who perceive events as being irredeemably subject to higher supernatural manipulation. It offers African governments a misplaced opportunity to ascribe failure in governance to extraneous supernatural factors. It also affords corrupt politicians the luxury of not being held accountable for their bad actions in government upon the belief that karma and judgment await them in the afterlife. This perspective blunts the desire of the citizens to seek retribution for economic crimes committed by their leaders.
Under this prism, accidents are not seen to be the result of human errors or bad road networks but are attributed to blood-sucking demons. Uncompleted projects in communities are not blamed on corrupt public officials but are attributed to the evil machinations of witches. Insecurity is seen as a problem not to be tackled with intelligence, but with fasting and prayers. This mindset absolves man from any form of responsibility for his actions, shifting the blame to supernatural beliefs. Necessity is no longer the mother of invention but viewed as a pointer to an angry supernatural being. Under such a canopy, innovation is stifled, intellectualism is trampled upon, hence the hope of development becomes a mirage.
This set of beliefs breeds incompetence, an underlying reason why many development projects, which have worked in other continents, continue to go down the pan in Africa. A few studies available lend credence to this view. An assistant professor of Economics, American University of Washington, Boris Gershman, in a paper titled ‘Witchcraft Beliefs and the Erosion of Social Capital,’ argues that such belief may slow economic growth. He reveals that such beliefs erode social capital which are vital components for community development.
“Evidence on the corrosive effects of witchcraft beliefs comes from fieldwork conducted in Tanzania, South Africa, Cameroon, Namibia, Mozambique, Zambia, and other countries, where such related fears manifest themselves in diminished cooperation, breakdown of mutual assistance networks, avoidance of joint projects, mistrust in community members, and general decline in social interactions,” the paper observed.
Similarly, an economist and risk management expert, Hillary Ndimele, sees a fault line in the system that births Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Africa. He laments that they are usually not built on the foundation of feasibility studies and market analysis, but on the alters of prayers and voodoo. This to him is why many businesses end up biting the dust and do not grow to become big companies as happens in other climes. Acknowledging that medium and small businesses are the heartbeat of any economy, Ndimele submits: “The economic cost of superstition in Africa is quite humongous and our over reliance on this skewed system will not help us to achieve our developmental goals on the continent.”
Ndimele has an ally in the Country Director, Small Business Academy Africa, Alaba Olusemore, who argues that the consultation of marabouts and ifa priests is deeply ingrained in African tradition. Olusemore sees this as an obstacle preventing the growth of small-scale businesses in Africa. He is, however, optimistic about change due to the increasing exposure of Africans to the digital world and more modern business practices. “Don’t forget that we overcame the obnoxious practice of killing twins and also the worship of twins as special beings. At one time, twins were venerated. Sacrifices were made because of twins. Today, those archaic practices have been phased out with modernity,” he says.
As a way out, African leaders should prioritize education that emphasizes critical thinking, science, and logic from an early age to reduce the influence of superstition and and witchcraft. By making education accessible and improving its quality, individuals are better equipped to question unfounded beliefs. As the maxim goes, “while it cannot cure everything, education is the best antidote for ignorance.”
Superstition may have offered some sort of help to many Africans in primeval times to grapple with the then unexplainable elemental forces of nature, but we are now at the age of technology and knowledge economy. It is perhaps time Africa threw away this baby with its birth water.
