The Pitfalls of Foreign Investigators on African Traditional Religion

Abstract

It is obvious that the pioneer investigators on African traditional religion were the Westerners. It is believed that it is from these writers that the indigenous African scholars took over from. Despite this, these earliest investigators were faced with many pitfalls. They were many in the course of this; such as missionaries, travelers, colonial administrators and European explorers each have claimed authentic interpreters of African religion. Thus, some of these foreign investigators came with pre-conceived and ethnocentric ideas and refused to see anything good about the Africans, their religion and culture. The study relied majorly on secondary sources (published materials). Findings reveal that the pitfalls of the earliest investigators on African religion is due to misconception of the world-views of the Africans.

Keywords: African Traditional Religion, Pitfalls, Foreign investigators, The Tue Nature of African Traditional Religion.