Jim, I agree that religious belief evidently represents a significant contributing factor. What appears to be the case here, is the "bolting on" (to borrow a phrase used previously) of specific Pentecostal religious beliefs about 'spirit possession' onto pre-existent and popularly held African folk beliefs about witchcraft.

As a number of others have articulated both here and in articles available on-line, numerous other factors such as poverty, war-torn crisis in the region and the blurring in adult / child roles within African society, have also contributed to the current epidemic of child witchcraft accusations in DRC (there are currently around 50'000 homeless urban child 'witches', according to one Guardian piece linked to below).

Nigeria has also been cited as a country within Africa similarly plagued - though as yet I've to follow up links on stories concerning Nigerian 'witchcraft' one would presume a similar constellation of factors would be involved there also.

Despite the fact that one may argue that religion has evidently played a key role in these cases, I feel it would be unhelpful to simply go pointing fingers at "Christianity" per se, particularly where there is evidence to show that faith leaders within the Congolese community in the UK, have long-since mobilised in order to attempt to address this issue.

I would suggest that what such groups require is support for their existing endevours, rather than (to borrow a turn of phrase) further witch-hunts.