Yes, I understand that he's trying to make those distinctions -- however, I maintain that they are false distinctions. They exist in his mind, not in reality.
1. Religion is an attempt to explain ultimate meaning and destiny.
So are many, if not most, non-theistic ideologies.
2. Ideology is a social/political philosophy enforced by governments.
The same can be said for many religions, or at least how they have been used in application. Islam, for example, but one doesn't have to go far to find Freepers who would be more than happy to use Christianity itself as the foundation of "a social/political philsophy enforced by government". Many would argue that this is indeed the founding principle of the United States itself.
In short, the author imagines a clean distinction where there is none -- in the real world, his two categories blur into each other.
If he wanted to ask his question about theistic versus non-theistic ideologies he'd have drawn a clearer line. But it's naive to try to do an analysis based on the false presumption that religious ideologies are somehow a wholly different animal from "social/political" ideologies.
There are good religious ideologies and bad religious ideologies. There are good non-theistic ideologies and bad non-theistic ideologies. If the author wants to argue that Christianity as a *particular* religion has done more for Africa than the three *particular* non-theistic ideologies he examines (Marxism, fascism, and extreme environmentalism), I'll certainly agree with that.
But what I do disagree with is his notion that he has therefore demonstrated that "religion" (as a category) is better than "ideology" (as a category), or even that "religion" is a distinct category from "ideology" (as I've already pointed out, religion is a *subset* of ideology -- i.e. theistic ideologies -- it's not a category apart from ideology).
Hard to answer a philosopher.