I think formal religious institutions are particularly prone to corruption, especially when corruption, as with government roles, can offer one of the few opportunities for people to become rich in a poor country.

That said. I imagine a personal sense of spiritualism, animism or deism is often relatively benign in a context with so many other pragmatic issues. Still, if the general population does adhere strongly to religious convictions, they are more likely to be preyed upon by authoritarians that want to use religion as a mechanism of control.

I don’t think it is worthwhile to make any one pronouncement about religion in poor countries. There are a lot of ways in which religion can be parasitic to a culture, but I don’t believe that it is inherently a negative force in all contexts.