In Religious Activism on Campuses in Togo and Benin, Frédérick Madore offers a detailed chronicle of Christian and Muslim student organizations in Togo and Benin since the founding of universities in the two newly independent nations. In seven substantive chapters and a conclusion, the author draws on archival documents, press publications, participant observation, and interviews to trace the development of faith-based student groups amidst political unrest, economic uncertainty, and pressure from authoritarian regimes. After the introductory chapter, the next four chapters follow student associations chronologically in periods of ten to twenty years per chapter. The final two chapters examine members’ lives after graduation and the changing nature of religious associations in recent years. Madore argues that student religious associations provide spiritual, social, and academic support, in addition to teaching morality and leadership skills that promote success in postgraduate life and improve civil society. He claims that faith-based groups have survived and thrived due to their resilience in the face of authoritarianism.
The book explains how religious liberalization in Togo and Benin opened the door to religious organizations within secular universities. We learn about Muslim groups’ attempts to combat Islamophobia and about Protestant groups’ resentment of Catholic associations’ preferential access to campus meeting spaces. Madore reveals the ties and tensions between religious associations and the parishes and mosques beyond the campus confines, and he shows how campus groups established partnerships with larger regional and international organizations. The book’s strength lies in its detailed chronology of the two countries’ student religious associations, documenting their activities and struggles and situating these groups within the complex political and economic landscape. For example, Madore demonstrates how student groups promote democratic ideals while attempting to maintain political neutrality to avoid provoking the ire of the countries’ ruling parties. In addition, faith-based groups have responded to challenges like university overcrowding, academic struggles, and unemployment by offering housing assistance, tutoring, and professional skills training to their members.
Overall, Madore provides a useful analysis of the political, economic, curricular, and social headwinds facing students, but due to the book’s narrow focus on religious associations, its heavy use of acronyms to identify the dozens of organizations, and the repetitive writing style, it will be most useful to historians or other specialized scholars, rather than to students or a general audience. The four chronological chapters hold the narrowest appeal due to their fine-grained tracking of different student groups and their formation, transition, or dissolution. The final chapters engage more with broader social questions of governance, laïcité (secularism), interfaith cooperation, post-COVID social change, and the value of a university education in contemporary African societies.
The work would have been stronger if the argument’s key concepts of resilience, thriving, professional success, and the shaping of civil society were more clearly defined. Madore shows that faith-based student groups survived, but it is unclear exactly which tactics were or were not successful, and whether their survival is a significant achievement in comparison to secular or other faith-based groups. Moreover, although the author provides stories of former students who went on to important roles in government or religious leadership, there is no attempt to measure these achievements against those of former members of secular student associations, so it is difficult to attribute former students’ success (or failure) to the religious organizations. Nor is there any way to measure how faith-based groups have positively impacted civil society, so we are forced to accept the organizations’ goals and practices as a proxy for results. In fact, although Madore emphasizes the moral and democratic training offered by faith organizations, he notes that Benin and Togo have corrupt governments that suppress democracy, and he states that this condition has grown worse. This makes it difficult to see how faith-based organizations have improved civil society. While these student groups may indeed have a positive impact on some individuals and on society, the inability to measure this or provide convincing evidence weakens the book’s argument and undermines its objectivity. Madore’s frequent praise for the faith-based groups’ resilience and the success of their professional training programs tends to celebrate the associations and their leaders rather than explain their successes and failures or analyze their inner workings. A more critical study would have explored the financial structures of student groups, the social or economic rewards given to student leaders, and the political and economic competition within religious associations. Although Madore notes that there are occasional disputes, he does not address corruption, suspicion, or scandal within the groups, which is striking in contrast to his emphasis on corruption in the wider society. This lacuna, along with the book’s emphasis on how the associations teach morality, implies that their members are morally pure and beyond reproach. On the other hand, Madore’s account demonstrates an admirable respect for the current and former members he interviewed and a deep knowledge of the complex relationships between student religious associations, politico-economic conditions, and the challenges of Togolese and Beninese students.
