ABSTRACT
This chapter engages the literature on religion and human security generally and explores what this might mean for addressing the same issue in the African context. It suggests that localizing the relationship between religion and human security in the context of Africa would require more depth of revision and analysis as religion very likely links in more nuanced ways to human security than the dominant binary 'hurt' or 'help' analysis suggests. The pervasive influence of religion in many spheres of life means that human security is in some ways located within a religious framework. The multifaceted nature of religious notions of human security underline the difficulties of analyzing meaning of human security itself, and of finding critical ways in which this meaning might be reinterpreted or reconstructed beyond the borders of religious identity politics of exclusion. The emphasis on the cultural dimension of human security is particularly relevant, especially when bringing religion and African realities into the conversation.
