US study sheds light on Africa’s unique religious mix

WASHINGTON – In the space of a century, Africa has morphed from a continent dominated by traditional beliefs to one where the majority of people are Christian or Muslim, a US study showed yesterday.

The vast majority of people in sub-Saharan Africa are deeply committed to the world’s two largest religions, according to the study by the Pew Research Forum on Religion and Public Life.Pew researchers surveyed 25 000 people in 19 sub-Saharan African countries between December 2008 and April 2009 to reach their conclusions.Traditional African beliefs however have not been lost – instead, they have been incorporated into Africans’ Christian or Muslim belief sets, according to the study.’It doesn’t seem to be an either-or for many people. They can describe themselves primarily as Muslim or Christian and continue to practice many of the traditions that are characteristic of African traditional religion,’ Luis Lugo, executive director of the Pew Forum, told AFP.’Africans still practise sacrifices, believe in the protective powers of charms and amulets – called juju in west Africa.’Significant percentages strongly believe in the evil eye, that there are certain people who can cast curses on others. Africans believe in sacred objects, they consult traditional religious healers – upwards of a third of the people we interviewed did,’ Lugo said.And yet in around half the countries involved in the study, everyone interviewed said they were Christian or Muslim. In most of the other countries, the vast majority – nine out of 10 interviewees – said the same.In contrast, 100 years ago, fewer than 25 per cent of the population said they were Christian or Muslim.’This is quite a religious transformation in a very short period of time,’ Lugo said.The number of Muslims living between the Sahara desert and South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope has increased more than 20-fold since 1900, from around 11 million to some 234 million this year, but the number of Christians in Africa has grown even faster.Around seven million Africans said they were Christian in 1900 compared with 470 million today.Nigeria has the largest number of Christians and the largest number of Muslims of any place in sub-Saharan Africa, the study found.The west African nation is the continent’s most populous and is divided almost evenly between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south.The French-speaking countries of Mali, Senegal and Djibouti were predominantly Muslim; Chad and Cameroon were more of an even mix in terms of adherents of Christianity and Islam, while countries in southern Africa were predominantly Christian.The central African states of Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda were also predominantly Christian, something Lugo put down to the influence of the two countries’ erstwhile colonial power, Belgium.Sub-Saharan African has become home to one in five of all the world’s Christians, and more than 15 per cent of the world’s Muslims, making the continent unique in having a roughly equal number of Christians and Muslims, the study found. – Nampa-AFP

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