Frafra entrepreneurs broke with traditional religion far more than other migrants

Evidence

Half the sample neither spoke nor wrote any English (Ghana’s official language) and only one in six was literate. Yet, as a group, they were remarkable for having made a break with traditional religion; whereas more than nine out of ten Frafra migrants were pagans, 21 per cent of the entrepreneurs were Muslim and 18 per cent were Christian or some agnostic mixture, a total of almost 40 per cent in the Ghana sample. This figure rose to near 50 per cent in urban areas and 60 per cent in the southern cities of Accra and Kumasi. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2362

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why would entrepreneurship correlate so strongly with religious conversion? Is conversion a trust-signaling device among strangers, aligning with the trust thesis?
• XREF: Echoes institutional-economics claims about religion as a reputational commitment device (e.g. Iannaccone’s club goods, Greif’s Maghribi traders).