Panelists examining witchcraft in Africa have warned that women, particularly older, widowed, economically vulnerable and socially isolated women, continue to bear a disproportionate burden of witchcraft accusations, as indigenous and religious beliefs are sometimes transformed into mechanisms of gender discrimination, social exclusion and persecution.

The concern emerged during the Toyin Falola Interview where scholars of philosophy, African studies, religion, gender and comparative religious history examined the theme, “Witchcraft in Africa.”

The panel, chaired by Professor Toyin Falola, featured Professor Godwin Sogolo, Rev. Prof. Grace Sintim Adasi, Professor David Frankfurter, Dr Claire Ayelotan and Professor John Azumah.

Professor John Azumah, drawing extensively from his research in Northern Ghana, offered one of the strongest gender-based critiques of witchcraft accusations, describing the belief as deeply implicated in patriarchal structures.

“I see witchcraft belief as one of the oldest conspiracy theories that has been devised by patriarchal societies,” Azumah said, describing it as “a simple control mechanism for women.”

Although witchcraft may be attributed to both men and women in some communities, he argued that the meanings attached to their alleged powers are often sharply differentiated.

“In the hands of men, witchcraft is generally deployed for positive purposes, for protection, and for provision. In the hands of women, witchcraft becomes evil and generally very harmful,” he observed.

His conclusion was unequivocal: “It is for me a demonization of womanhood. Dehumanization of women.”

Azumah said the gender disparity becomes particularly visible in the witch camps of Northern Ghana, where women constitute the overwhelming majority of those accused and confined.

“If you go to the camps, even though you find a few men, the women made about 98% of the inmates and the men were just about 2%,” he said.

For him, the pattern cannot be separated from broader transformations in African communities, particularly changes in women’s economic roles and the competition that can accompany them.

He recalled the case of his own first cousin, who was accused of witchcraft because she was able to trade and provide education for her children when other women in the family could not. Her economic success, rather than protecting her from suspicion, became part of the circumstances through which she was targeted.

Azumah argued that such cases expose the gendered character of accusations in which women’s economic independence or unusual success can generate suspicion.

Rev. Prof. Grace Sintim Adasi extended the analysis by examining the physical, social and economic characteristics that can make some women particularly vulnerable to accusations.

“Who is most likely to be accused of witchcraft?” she asked, drawing attention to the particular vulnerability of older women.

“A woman is more hairy, especially when she has a beard, we are thinking she is a witch. When she has a deep voice, we are thinking she is a witch,” Adasi explained.

She identified elderly women, widows and socially vulnerable women among those frequently exposed to suspicion, arguing that gender inequality, age, poverty, widowhood and family conflict can converge to produce accusations.

“A woman who is economically vulnerable may become an easy target, a widow who has limited protection may become vulnerable, an elderly woman who lives alone may become suspicious in the eyes of others,” she said.

For Adasi, therefore, witchcraft accusations cannot be separated from existing social inequalities.

“Witchcraft accusations can sometimes become a mechanism through which existing gender and social inequalities are expressed and reinforced,” she said.

Dr Claire Ayelotan pushed the discussion further by examining the material interests that can lie beneath apparently supernatural accusations. She noted that accusations can emerge in situations involving property, inheritance, land and economic success.

“Sometimes there is no [misfortune] at all,” she said. “There is property to seize. There is land to grab. There’s an inheritance. There’s a shop of somebody that is doing well that somebody is jealous of.”

In such circumstances, Ayelotan argued, the accusation may be constructed to justify an outcome that someone already desires.

“We have the accusation comes first, and then the reasoning is recruited later,” she said.

Her intervention suggested that the language of witchcraft can sometimes conceal struggles over power and resources, with women who are widowed, economically successful or insufficiently protected becoming particularly vulnerable.

Professor David Frankfurter placed the African experience within a wider comparative history of how societies identify human beings as embodiments of evil.

A scholar of comparative religions, Frankfurter said one of his central interests has been “the ways that communities experience evil in their midst, in the form of demons or evil objects or people that they blame for misfortune.”

Drawing on his book Evil Incarnate, he explained that societies across different historical and cultural settings have repeatedly transformed neighbours, acquaintances and other identifiable people into embodiments of danger.

“I want to remind you that witch was only one form of incarnate evil in European and American history,” Frankfurter said, pointing to historical examples in which Jews, alleged Satanists and foreigners were similarly portrayed as sources of danger.

For him, the comparative perspective is important because it demonstrates that the construction of an alleged witch is not simply about an abstract supernatural belief. It involves a social process through which suspicion becomes attached to a real human being.

Frankfurter therefore urged scholars to shift attention from the abstract question of whether witches exist to the people and institutions that identify them.

“I think it is important not to talk immediately about witches in general, in the abstract, but about the charisma and the claims of the so-called experts who identify them as evil beings,” he said.

He identified “the witch cleansers,” “the discerners of evil” and “the deliverance pastors” as figures whose authority can shape how communities interpret misfortune and identify supposed sources of evil.

“How do these experts gain such authority?” Frankfurter asked. “What is their effect on families and communities who may fear evil and danger in their midst?”

According to him, “identifying a witch is a product of charismatic experts and communities enthralled to those experts.”

Frankfurter argued that understanding this process is essential because the person accused can cease to be viewed as an ordinary member of the community and instead become a representation of a much larger imagined threat.

He described this transformation as a “tableau of evil,” in which the alleged witch becomes associated with “monstrous behavior,” “secret society” and conspiracy.

He cited Emmanuel Amos Eni’s Delivered from the Powers of Darkness as an example of literature that presented elaborate claims about satanic underground networks in West Africa. Frankfurter said such narratives helped transform individual accusations into much larger stories of conspiracy.

The result, he argued, is that the accused person is no longer seen simply as a neighbour, relative or community member.

“He or she is no longer the individual person everybody knew in the community, but truly a monstrous opponent of society,” he said.

Frankfurter also drew attention to the physical and symbolic treatment of people identified as witches in different historical contexts, explaining that accused persons could be made to perform or dress in ways that reinforced the image of them as embodiments of evil.

His wider argument was that communities often seek a recognisable human face for misfortune.

“I suggest the theory of the idea of the witch localizes misfortune or success that creates anxiety in the community,” he said.

In this interpretation, the witch becomes a way of converting complex fears about misfortune, social change, economic uncertainty or personal success into a clearly identifiable human target.

Frankfurter further linked the modern construction of witchcraft to religious transformation, particularly the rise of Pentecostalism.

“The nature and extent of conspiracy that is modern, as well as the pseudo-scientific used, again a feature of Emmanuel Eni’s book and of American notions of Satanism,” he said.

He argued that “putting community danger in satanic dress” can give local fears and accusations an international and biblical vocabulary, creating a connection between the rise of Pentecostalism and contemporary constructions of the witch.