Conference on Law and Religion in Africa — University of Ghana, 14-15 January 2013

Participants to the Conference on Law and Religion in Africa, Accra ( Ghana) 14 - 15 January 2013.

A conference on Law and Religion in Africa: Comparative Practices, Experiences, and Prospects was held 14-15 January 2013 at the University of Ghana in Legon, Ghana. Scholars, legal professionals, and religious leaders from Benin, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierre Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, the United Kindgom, and the United States gathered in Legon for the two-day event.

The Opening Session of the conference was chaired by Ernest Aryeetey, Vice-Chancellor and Professor, University of Ghana, and James R. Rasband, Dean and Hugh W. Colton Professor of Law of the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. After welcome and introductions by Kofi Quashigah, Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, participants were welcomed by Justice Samuel Kofi Date-Bah, Supreme Courts of Ghana and the Gambia, and Naa John S. Nabila, Professor and President, National House of Chiefs, Ghana.

The Opening Session featured three keynote addresses: by Musonda Trevor Selwyn Mwamba, Rt. Rev. Dr., Bishop of Botswana (Anglican); by Dean Quashigah, and by W. Cole Durham, Jr., Susa Young Gates University Professor of Law and Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, J. Reuben Clark Law School.

Following the Opening Session, the conference continued with six more sessions: Constitutionalism and Religion, Indigenous Religions and Customary Law.   Day one of the conference concluded with Session IV: Religion-State Relations: Country Case Studies.

The conference continued with three sessions on Tuesday: Session V: Tension between Religion and State: Country Case Studies, Session VI: Politics and Pluralism, Session VII: State Responses to Religious Minorities. Concluding remarks were offered on Tuesday afternoon by Dean Quashigah and Professor Durham.

Prof. Sourou Jean-Baptiste  presented in the Session II: Indigenous Religions and Customary Law,  and his paper was on the Relationships between the  Catholic Church and the  African Traditional Religion at the light of the synods of 1994 and 2009.