Religion was an age-old, intractable problem in other countries, but East Africa had no such concerns, because from the very beginning, it had been a nation built on secular power.
Moreover, this land of East Africa had once possessed only the Arab religion and some indigenous shamans. Shamans could also be called priests. The indigenous peoples were underdeveloped; even where states existed, beneath them lay a great many tribes and independent villages. These countless small units each worshipped their own ghosts and gods.
Nor could they form a unified faith. In Ernst's understanding, religion was a social group with a rigorous organizational structure and a unified doctrine. Therefore, those scattered indigenous beliefs in East Africa simply did not meet the requirements for religion.
If religion existed in Africa, then that force would certainly not be weak. The simplest example was the Abyssinian Empire. They believed in Christianity's "Coptic Church." This denomination was similar to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but due to the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire, it was closer to Eastern Orthodoxy.
Religious forces could suppress social conflicts and bind society into a single whole. This was a characteristic of many regimes where religion and government were one, which was why religious states could so easily grow powerful.
Sub-Saharan Africa clearly had no such religious force. Otherwise, relying on religious power, it could absolutely have developed relatively powerful centralized regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa.
As a feudal slave kingdom, East Africa guarded not only against "reactionary" notions such as freedom and democracy, but also against backward ideas such as religion and anti-science, although East Africa's own system already looked rather reactionary and backward.
That depended on one's point of view. The eastern feudal lords had even called Qin a Rong-Di state! It was not that Ernst looked down on