Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

In the face of migration and globalization, the question that continues to emerge in the discourses of African scholars and beyond, borders on the survival of African Traditional Religion. Some scholars in reaction to this have argued that with Western education and medicine, the wake of urbanization and industrialization, the huge movement of the young from village life to urban areas in the search for survival, African Traditional Religion would pass away with history through extinction as in the case of the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome that have faded away. This paper is written as an antithesis to the above perspective. It argues that rather than death, African Traditional Religion has gone global through migration and globalization. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade led to the growth of African-inspired traditions in the Americas such as Candomblé in Brazil, Santería in Cuba and Vodun in Haïti. Furthermore, many in places like the US and the UK have converted to various traditional African religions, and the importance of the diaspora for these religions is growing rapidly. African religions have also become a major attraction for those in the diaspora who travel to Africa on pilgrimages because of the global reach of these traditions. The method of research employed in this paper is the historical and hermeneutic methods of investigation.

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