ABSTRACT
Even though Africa’s second and third wave of democratization entrenched secularity as a governing ethic, the idea that secularity means the absence of religion from the public sphere is not a feature of African states. In fact, it can be argued that from available evidence, African states are de facto religious states where Islam and Christianity dominate and structure the public sphere. The challenge faced by secular African states is that of neutrality to enable all religions a fair access to the public sphere. This chapter conceives a mechanism by which African states can be neutral to all religions so that their ideas of the public good can inform statecraft. In doing this, the chapter disputes the claims of postsecularism advocated by Habermas and a number of other scholars.
