Chinese herbal medicine has long been an integral part of traditional medicine and has become popular throughout Western society as well. Whether they should be considered as part of religion in Africa is debatable, since religious practices vary; the answer depends on how individual societies view the body and the spirit, and how they integrate healing into their own religious practices.
From the standpoint of Western cultures, which separate the physical body from the spirit, herbal medicine would have no valid place in religion, however natural the treatments and however beneficial the results. The body does not have deep religious significance, and among peoples in Africa who practice Western faiths (like Christianity or Islam), herbal medicine should be considered more of a health practice than a religious one.
However, in African societies where the physical and spiritual are not treated as separate entities, but as parts of the same whole, curing the body has greater spiritual meaning. Such societies see healing as part of a spiritual process and the administering of such cures as something holy and connected to the deities, and in some African cultures the shaman or “medicine man” has considerable spiritual importance and plays a basically religious role as well as a medical one.
If a given people believe that the body is itself holy and curing its maladies is divine, then herbal medicine should be seen as a religious practice. The answer to the question depends on the nature of the individual society being studied; no single answer should be applied to all African peoples. One should consider the context of the body in individual societies and determine whether herbal medicine (as well as the people who administer it and the rituals performed) has spiritual meaning; if it does, then it should be considered part of African religion.