Religion is Boom to the World but Bane for Africa

The Europeans (read Christians) and the Arabs (read Muslims) came to Africa to trade in black Africans as slaves, exploit our natural resources, forcefully convert the inhabitants to their religions and subsequently damn us to eternal life of misery and poverty. Religion as a cultural tool in colonization has been used very effectively, particularly, by the west to build and accumulate wealth at the expense of the conquered people. In fact, this wealth is so huge and diversified such that nobody can say, for certain, when it will ever be exhausted to allow the western citizens and their religious organizations to collect their last dividend cheques. May be never! From the ancient times to the present, armies have invaded foreign lands in the name of bringing heathens closer to God, when in fact their sole mission is to control and exploit them for wealth creation and accumulation. The euphemism nowadays is working smart! This clearly came to the fore during the 1884-85 Berlin conference when European leaders ordered invasion, indoctrination and exploitation of our continent in the the partition and scramble for Africa. Even the recent invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan is nothing more than the work of the stronger Christian West to conquer and exploit the mineral resources of the weaker Muslim East. However, this has given the black Africans an opportunity to watch gleefully as in a case where the chickens have finally come to roost. Or may be this is a case of Arabs tasting a dose of their own medicine after having ruthlessly castrated so many Black Africans who ended up in their courtyards during the slave trade. Coming back to the West, Europe and America have been largely built from the resources exploited, confiscated and stolen from Africa. The large mining companies, Banks and many other industries that today thrive in the west owe their seed and re-investment capital to black Africa. Consequently, the Christian Church has thrived and prospered due to its close association with the rulers in those countries due to their close alliance. The Evangelical church is so strong in the US because of its close association with the government. The current proliferation of churches in Africa is due to the funding from the Evangelicals who are in government, banking, insurance, manufacturing , entertainment and media industries. The paradox of all this is that Africa continues to remain poor while it boasts some of the most grandiose religious edifices in the world. The Basilica of lady of Peace, the 3rd largest church in the world was completed in 1989 in Yamoussoukro in Ivory Coast. Coincidentally, the same year the tallest religious building in the world, Hassan II Mosque was completed in Casablanca, Morocco. All these religious monuments are representatives of foreign religions from the rich world built in a continent that remains poor due to their continued exploitation. The ubiquitous flashy presence of televangelists on our TV screens even as the Turkana feed on dogs to avoid starvation tells us that we can't bank on foreign religions to give us the daily bread. What we need in black Africa is redemption from ignorance so that we can fed for ourselves and not foreign religious bigotry.