Remoboko

Religion, Morality and Boko in West Africa

Research data, Python code and interactive visualisations from Remoboko, a study of religiosity and how it affects secular education (boko, in Hausa) in West Africa.

The project focused on the presence, competition and conflict between secularism, Salafism and Pentecostalism on four campuses — Université Abdou Moumouni (Niamey, Niger), University of Ibadan (Nigeria), Université de Lomé (Togo) and Université d'Abomey-Calavi (Benin). It examined how students seeking a degree that would ensure them a better life resort to Salafism and Pentecostalism, and how boko in this context is both appealing and rejected.

Remoboko was a Leibniz Junior Research Group that ran from June 2018 to 2024. It was based at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin and funded through the Leibniz Competition. Project blog: https://remoboko.hypotheses.org/.

Interactive visualisations

Every HTML visualisation in this repository is served live from GitHub Pages — no download or Python install needed.

Maps for the book:

• Points of interest around Abomey-Calavi and Lomé — 33 churches, mosques, schools, universities and landmarks
• Universities of Benin and Togo
• Timeline of religion, education and politics — 37 events, 1960–2010

Final report:

• Collaborators by country · mapped by affiliation
• Publications and activities by type and language · over time

Contents

Book_DeGruyter/

Code and data for the maps and timelines in the monograph:

Frédérick Madore, Religious Activism on Campuses in Togo and Benin: Christian and Muslim Students Navigating Authoritarianism and Laïcité, 1970–2023. ZMO-Studien 48. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111428895

Path	What it produces	View
Maps/map_locations.py	UAC_UL_locations_map.html — 33 points of interest (churches, mosques, schools, universities, landmarks) around Abomey-Calavi and Lomé	Open ↗
Maps/map_universities.py	universities_map.html — the four Beninese and Togolese universities, with logos as markers	Open ↗
Maps/points_of_interest.html	Standalone Leaflet view of the same locations.json	Open ↗
Timeline/timeline.py	Religion_Timeline and Education_Politics_Timeline (PNG + SVG) — 37 events, 1960–2010, across Togo and Benin	—
Timeline/index.html + script.js	D3.js version of the timeline for the browser	Open ↗

Final report/

Code, data and figures for the project's final report:

Path	What it produces	View
collaborators_country.py	collaborators_by_country.html — 93 collaborators across 24 countries	Open ↗
collaborators_map.py	collaborators_map.html — the same collaborators geolocated by affiliation	Open ↗
collaborators_gender.py	collaborators_gender.png (+ _white variant)	—
treemap.py	treemap_chart.html — 181 publications and activities by type and language	Open ↗
activities_type_time.py	activities_type_over_time.html — output by type, 2018–2025	Open ↗
word_clouds.py	WordClouds/english_wordcloud.png and french_wordcloud.png	—

viz_common.py

Shared design tokens (fonts, country colours, qualitative palette), load_json, the standard folium base map and the remoboko Plotly template. Every script imports it so the figures stay visually consistent.

Data

File	Records
Book_DeGruyter/Maps/locations.json	33 GeoJSON points — name, country, type
Book_DeGruyter/Timeline/data.json	37 events — date, country, category (Religion / Education / Politics), plus optional label-layout hints
Final report/Data/Collaborators_data.json	93 collaborators — name, gender, affiliation, country, coordinates
Final report/Data/Publications_and_activities_data.json	181 records — title, type, author(s), date, language, abstract

Getting started

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate          # Windows
source .venv/bin/activate       # macOS / Linux

pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m spacy download fr_core_news_lg   # only needed for word_clouds.py

Every script is standalone and writes its output next to itself:

python Book_DeGruyter/Maps/map_locations.py
python "Final report/treemap.py"

How to cite

If you use this repository — its code, its data or the figures it generates — please cite it. GitHub renders a ready-made citation from CITATION.cff via the Cite this repository button in the sidebar.

For the research itself, cite the book: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111428895.

License

• Code (Python scripts, viz_common.py, script.js, HTML scaffolding) — MIT.
• Research data and generated figures (the JSON files, and the PNG / SVG / HTML outputs) — CC BY 4.0.
• The university logos in Book_DeGruyter/Maps/ and the national flag icons in Book_DeGruyter/Timeline/ are third-party material and are covered by neither licence.

See NOTICE.md for the file-by-file breakdown.

Acknowledgements

Funded through the Leibniz Competition and hosted by Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin. Country boundaries in .github/assets/ come from Natural Earth (public domain).