African Humanism un Uganda: An Ethnographic Study

In the course of the past two decades, a secular humanist movement has emerged in sub-Saharan Africa. The case of Uganda-now home to the greatest number of humanist institutions on the continent-is particularly striking. The joint efforts of community-based organizations located throughout the nation have led to the establishment of humanist primary and secondary schools, adult vocational training centers, youth empowerment programs, radio productions, magazines, and public anti-superstition campaigns. The philosophy of this movement, often called "African humanism" by its proponents, promotes human rights, gender equality, the practical application of science and reason in everyday life, and a prioritization of human values over any religiously grounded moralities (Mukasa 2011; Lukyamuzi 2013; Ongere 2014; Musubaho 2016a). In the words of one leading spokesperson, "what we are witnessing here is the unfolding of humanism in terms of its universal promise, possibility and applicability" (Igwe 2012a: 2).
Africa is completely omitted from recent studies that take stock of humanist organizations across the world (e.g. Bullivant & Ruse 2013; Copson & Grayling 2015). At the same time, the continent is often invoked by critics of secularization theories as the exemplary example of the continued public significance of religion (Engelke 2015a). Furthermore, the contemporary role of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa has become a prominent topic of anthropological research (e.g. Engelke 2007; Boylston 2015; Haynes 2017), and scholars have recently labeled the public sphere of Uganda "Pentecostalized" to reflect the impact of charismatic churches (Bompani & Brown 2015: 100). Problematically, there is a separate tendency to represent Africa as separate and exceptional, a world where an "enchanted religious imaginary" (Gifford 2015: 14) prevails and spirits are thought to inhabit "immediate reality, like stones, rivers, and mountains" (Taylor 2007; Meyer 2012). However, humanist groups continue to multiply in Uganda at a time when an unparalleled number of progressive social campaigns are taking place and the public role of religious actors is facing novel protests. For instance, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement in Uganda led a successful 2016 campaign to prosecute an American pastor for his involvement in the creation of homophobic legislation (Valois 2015; CCR 2016). Taken together, the emergence of both humanist institutions and LGBT rights claims exemplify "civil society movements asserting their political identity and rights as never before in Uganda and in other African contexts" (Bompani & Brown 2015: 111).
This ethnographic project seizes the opportunity to study the cultural and political impact of the humanist movement in Uganda, which as received no scholarly attention in spite of nearly 20 years of growth. This research is in tune with the recent emergence of anthropological studies of atheism, humanism, rationalism, and other types of non-religion (e.g. Schielke 2012; Quack 2012; Engelke 2014; Blanes & Oustinova-Stjepanovic 2015), while also critically widening the geographical reach and theoretical concerns of this new subfield. It does this through extending crucial insights from studies of non-religion to the Ugandan context to develop a new approach that is focused on the internal features of organized secular humanism.