Christianity is the main religion in Sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2020, 62 percent of the region's population was Christian. Muslims followed, accounting for 31.4 percent of the total population. In addition, 3.2 percent of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa practiced traditional African religions, while the unaffiliated constituted three percent of the population.

Christianity is the main religion in Sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2020, over 650 million people in the region were Christian. Muslims followed, amounting to around 330 million, while folk religions counted over 33 million adherents. By 2050, the number of Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to exceed 1.1 billion, Muslims are forecast to be around 670 million, and folk religions to account for about 61 million adherents.

Christianity is the main religion in Sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2020, over 650 million people in the region were Christian. Muslims followed, amounting to around 330 million. Moreover, folk religions counted over 33 million adherents, while the unaffiliated were approximately 31 million.

'The vast majority of people in many sub-Saharan African nations are deeply committed to the practices and major tenets of one or the other of the world's two largest religions, Christianity and Islam. Large majorities say they belong to one of these faiths, and, in sharp contrast with Europe and the United States, very few people are religiously unaffiliated. Despite the dominance of Christianity and Islam, traditional African religious beliefs and practices have not disappeared. Rather, they coexist with Islam and Christianity. Whether or not this entails some theological tension, it is a reality in people's lives: Large numbers of Africans actively participate in Christianity or Islam yet also believe in witchcraft, evil spirits, sacrifices to ancestors, traditional religious healers, reincarnation and other elements of traditional African religions.' Explore 'key findings from more than 25,000 face-to-face interviews conducted on behalf of the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life in more than 60 languages or dialects in 19 sub-Saharan African nations from December 2008 to April 2009. [...] The countries were selected to span this vast geographical region and to reflect different colonial histories, linguistic backgrounds and religious compositions. In total, the countries surveyed contain three-quarters of the total population of sub-Saharan Africa.' (Full Report)

This statistic shows religious diversity in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2010, by share of religious population. In 2010, around 63 percent of population, in Sub-Saharan Africa, identified as Christian.

Christianity is the major religion in numerous African countries. As of 2024, around 96 percent of the population of Zambia was Christian, representing the highest percentage on the continent. Seychelles and Rwanda followed with roughly 95 percent and 94 percent of the population being Christian, respectively. While these countries present the highest percentages, Christianity was also prevalent in many other African nations. For instance, in South Africa, Christianity was the religion of nearly 85 percent of the people, while the share corresponded to 71 percent in Ghana. Religious variations across Africa Christianity and Islam are the most practiced religions in Africa. Christian adherents are prevalent below the Sahara, while North Africa is predominantly Muslim. In 2020, Christians accounted for around 60 percent of the Sub-Saharan African population, followed by Muslims with a share of roughly 30 percent. In absolute terms, there were approximately 650 million Christians in the region, a number forecast to increase to over one billion by 2050. In contrast, Islam is most prevalent in North Africa, being the religion of over 90 percent of the population in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya. Christianity in the world As opposed to other religions, Christianity is widely spread across continents worldwide. In fact, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe each account for around 25 percent of the global Christian population. By comparison, Asia-Pacific and North America make up 13 percent and 12 percent of Christians worldwide, respectively. In several regions, Christians also suffer persecution on religious grounds. Somalia and Libya presented the most critical situation in Africa in 2021, reporting the strongest suppression of Christians worldwide just after North Korea and Afghanistan.

Islam is the major religion in many African countries, especially in the north of the continent. In Comoros, Libya, Western Sahara, at least 99 percent of the population was Muslim as of 202. These were the highest percentages on the continent. However, also in many other African nations, the majority of the population was Muslim. In Egypt, for instance, Islam was the religion of 79 percent of the people. Islam and other religions in Africa Africa accounts for an important share of the world’s Muslim population. As of 2019, 16 percent of the Muslims worldwide lived in Sub-Saharan Africa, while 20 percent of them lived in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Together with Christianity, Islam is the most common religious affiliation in Africa, followed by several traditional African religions. Although to a smaller extent, numerous other religions are practiced on the continent: these include Judaism, the Baha’i Faith, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Number of Muslims worldwide Islam is one of the most widespread religions in the world. There are approximately 1.9 billion Muslims globally, with the largest Muslim communities living in the Asia-Pacific region. Specifically, Indonesia hosts the highest number of Muslims worldwide, amounting to over 200 million, followed by India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Islam is also present in Europe and America. The largest Islamic communities in Europe are in France (5.72 million), Germany (4.95 million), and the United Kingdom (4.13 million). In the United States, there is an estimated number of around 3.45 million Muslims.

Project Summary Does religion influence political participation? This book takes up this pressing debate using Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa as its empirical base to demonstrate that religious teachings communicated in sermons can influence both the degree and the form of citizens' political participation. McClendon and Riedl document some of the current diversity of sermon content in contemporary Christian houses of worship and then use a combination of laboratory experiments, observational survey data, focus groups, and case comparisons in Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya to interrogate the impact of sermon exposure on political participation and the longevity of that impact. From Pews to Politics leverages the pluralism of sermons in sub-Saharan Africa to gain insight into the content of cultural influences and their consequences for how ordinary citizens participate in politics. The sermon data were collected in order to describe and understand religious messages in our research sites, with the goal of then investigating the effects of exposure to such religious teachings on political behavior. We wanted to have a deep and broad understanding of what clergy-congregant communication across a range of contemporary churches actually looks like, without prejudgment. Therefore, we sampled churches of different denominations and conducted church-level surveys and participant observation in sub-Saharan African cities. In Nairobi, along with a team of research assistants, we collected texts of Sunday sermons, observed worship services and other church activities, and collected information on congregation characteristics. We compare churches’ social organizations, weekday programming, and social welfare activities. In order to approximate a random sample of churches, we generated two comprehensive lists of (1) Pentecostal churches and (2) Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches in Nairobi based on Google Maps and then, using a random number generator, created a sample of one hundred Pentecostal churches and fifty Mainline/Catholic churches, expecting that there might be more variation among Pentecostal churches (see also McClendon and Riedl 2016). Because some churches are new, poor, or not officially registered, we did not work from government registration lists, nor did we rely on capturing information only from church websites. This method allowed the highest degree of church variation and self-categorization. We collected sermons online, where available, and in person through attending a service and transcribing the message. In total we collected sermon content from sixty of the one hundred selected Pentecostal churches and from twenty four of the fifty selected Mainline and Catholic churches, with random replacement for churches that could not be located at all. Sermons span from 2008 – 2017; data collection took place from 2003 – 2017. In other contexts across sub-Saharan Africa (Accra, Lagos, and Kampala), we conducted a cursory examination of sermon content by searching for Pentecostal, Mainline Protestant, and Catholic churches that appeared in Google Maps. We then collected any online sermons, recording, or texts from the churches that had Websites, YouTube channels, or social media pages with sermon content. This method allowed us to examine the sermons of seven Pentecostal and seven Mainline/Catholic churches in Accra, eight Pentecostal and three Mainline/Catholic churches in Lagos, and three Pentecostal and two Mainline/Catholic churches in Kampala (for a total of thirty churches). Most churches had their most recent sermon, if any, available online, so the coverages of these searches is limited to 2017. We also conducted an exercise in Johannesburg that paralleled the one done in Nairobi but we don't include those sermons in this depository because they are owned also by Dr. Maria Frahm-Arp at University of Johannesburg and discussed only briefly in the book. Data Overview Nairobi sermons: This file folder contains the .txt files of the sermons collected, transcribed and recorded from Nairobi churches. Sermons have been de-identified by removing any specific references to the church name, location and pastoral teams. Each sermon file (.txt) is labeled with a unique identifier that contains a church identifier (rather than name) and date on which the sermon was delivered, where available. Sermons outside of Nairobi: This file folder contains the .txt files of the sermons collected, transcribed and recorded from churches in other cities (not Nairobi). Sermons have been de-identified by removing any specific references to the church name, location and pastoral teams. Each sermon file (.txt) is labeled with a unique identifier that contains the country name from which it was collected, a church identifier (rather than name) and date on which the sermon was delivered, where available. Meta data: McClendonRiedl_SermonData.xlsx contains information on churches that delivered the sermons. Not all...

Pew Research Center surveyed 13,122 adults across six countries in Asia about religious identity, beliefs, and practices, using nationally representative methods. Interviews were conducted face-to-face in Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. They were conducted on mobile phones in Malaysia and Singapore. Local interviewers administered the survey from June to September 2022, in eight languages.

This survey is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, a broader effort by Pew Research Center to study religious change and its impact on societies around the world. The Center previously has conducted religion-focused surveys across sub-Saharan Africa; the Middle East-North Africa region and many countries with large Muslim populations; Latin America; Israel; Central and Eastern Europe; Western Europe; India; and the United States.

This survey includes three countries in which Buddhists make up a majority of the population (Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand); two countries with Muslim majorities (Malaysia and Indonesia); and one country that is religiously diverse, with no single group forming a majority (Singapore). We also are surveying five additional countries and territories in Asia, to be covered in a future report.

Pew Research Center has produced a supplemental syntax file containing SPSS code to generate common analytic variables in the survey's corresponding report and toplines. The ARDA has provided this syntax in a copyable PDF document as an additional download.

Islam and Christianity form the two dominant religions in Nigeria. Since colonialism, approximately 90 percent of the Nigerian people identify themselves as Islamic or Christian. The northern region of Nigeria is predominately Islamic, while the southern region is predominately Christian.

Nigeria’s contact with Islam predated that of Christianity and European colonialism; its spread was facilitated into Sub-Saharan Africa through trade and commerce. The northern part of Nigeria is symbolic to the history of Islam, as it penetrated the area through the Kanem-Borno Empire in the 11th century before spreading to other predominately Hausa states. Islam was then introduced into the traditional societies of the Yoruba-speaking people of south-west Nigeria through their established commercial relationship with people of the north, particularly the Nupe and Fulani.

Christianity reached Nigeria in the 15th century with the visitation of Catholic missionaries to the coastal areas of the Niger-Delta region. Christianity soon recorded a boost in the southern region given its opposition to the slave trade and its promotion of Western education.

The distinct religious divide has instigated violence in present-day Nigeria, including the Sharia riot in Kaduna in 2000, ongoing ethno-religious violence in Jos since 2001, and the 2011 post-election violence that erupted in some northern states, particularly in the city of Maiduguri. Nigerians’ continued loyalty to religion compared to that of the country continues to sustain major political debate, conflict, and violent outbreaks between populations of the two faiths.

ISO3-International Organization for Standardization 3-digit country code

NAME-Name of religious institution

TYPE-Type of religious institution

CITY-City religious institution is located in

SPA_ACC-Spatial accuracy of site location 1- high, 2 – medium, 3 - low

SOURCE_DT-Source creation date

SOURCE-Primary source

SOURCE2_DT-Secondary source creation date

SOURCE2-Secondary source

Collection

This HGIS was created using information collected from the web sites GCatholic.org, Islamic Finder, Wikimapia, and BBBike.org, which uses OpenStreetMap, a crowd-source collaboration project that geo-locates sites throughout the world. After collection, all education institutions were geo-located.

The data included herein have not been derived from a registered survey and should be considered approximate unless otherwise defined. While rigorous steps have been taken to ensure the quality of each dataset, DigitalGlobe Analytics is not responsible for the accuracy and completeness of data compiled from outside sources.

Sources (HGIS)

BBBike, "Nigeria." Last modified 2013. Accessed March 19, 2013. http://extract.bbbike.org.

GCatholic.org, "Catholic Churches in Federal Republic of Nigeria." Last modified 2013. Accessed April 4, 2013. http://www.gcatholic.org/.

Islamic Finder, "Nigeria." Last modified 2013. Accessed April 4, 2013. http://islamicfinder.org/.

Olanrewaju, Timothy. The Sun, "oko Haram attacks church in Maiduguri." Last modified 2013. Accessed April 9, 2013. http://sunnewsonline.com/.

Wikimapia, "Nigeria:Mosques/Churches." Last modified 2013. Accessed April 4, 2013. http://wikimapia.org/

World Watch Monitor, "Muslim Threat to Attack Church Raises Tensions." Last modified 2012. Accessed April 9, 2013. http://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/.

Sources (Metadata)

Danjibo, N.D. "Islamic Fundamentalism and Sectarian Violence: The "Maitatsine" and "Boko Haram" Crises in Northern Nigeria." manuscript., University of Ibadan, 2010. http://www.ifra-nigeria.org.

Olanrewaju, Timothy. The Sun, "oko Haram attacks church in Maiduguri." Last modified 2013. Accessed April 9, 2013. http://sunnewsonline.com/.

Onapajo, Hakeem. "Politics for God: Religion, Politics, and Conflict in Democratic Nigeria." Journal of Pan African Studies. 4. no. 9 (2012): 42-66. http://web.ebscohost.com (accessed March 26, 2013).

World Watch Monitor, "Muslim Threat to Attack Church Raises Tensions." Last modified 2012. Accessed April 9, 2013. http://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/.

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) is a movement within the Roman Catholic Church that has grown dramatically in many parts of the world over the past three decades, including Sub-Saharan Africa. This survey's aim is to establish the relationship between the CCR and civic engagement in Kenya and Nigeria. This data file focuses on Kenya. The questionnaires had items relating to religious behavior and beliefs and political attitudes and behaviors. The "/data-archive?fid=NIGERIA11" Target="_blank">Nigeria file can also be found on the ARDA.

This dataset contains all supplementary information that describes the various stages involved in conducting a literature review of existing studies on intimate partner violence (IPV) and Christian local congregations in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2010 and early 2024. It is for an article on Christian Faith Communities and Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): A Scoping Review.

According to a global survey conducted in 2020, 36 percent of respondents from the Sub-Saharan Africa region trusted the religious leaders had made a lot of COVID-related decisions based on scientific advice, the highest share across all regions globally. This statistic presents the distribution of public opinion on whether religious leaders based COVID-related decisions on scientific advice worldwide in 2020, by region.

In 2022, 99 percent of Hindus and Buddhists worldwide lived in Asia-Pacific. In comparison, 43 percent of Jews lived in North America, and 45.4 percent lived in the Middle East and North Africa. Christians were more evenly divided around the continents.

Motivated by the growing fiscal deficits in sub-Saharan Africa, this study examines fiscal deficit’s economic, political, and institutional drivers using a panel of twenty-three sub-Saharan African countries. Panel spatial consistent correlation, dynamic fixed effects autoregressive distributed lag, and feasible generalised ordinary least squares were used as the estimation techniques. Our findings reveal that while per capita income, trade openness, population, and religious tension increase the size of fiscal deficit, bureaucracy quality, government stability, Law and order, and military in politics reduce the extent of fiscal deficit. However, corruption control, democratic accountability, and internal conflict have weaker statistical evidence. Furthermore, the study established evidence of long-run co-integration relationships among institutional factors, economic factors, and fiscal deficits in SSA. Per capita income has a significant positive influence in the short run but a negative effect in the long run. Population and religious tension positively impact fiscal deficit in both periods. However, democratic accountability, government stability, and the military in politics significantly negatively impact fiscal deficit in the long run. This study concludes that beyond economic factors, institutional and political factors are significant drivers of fiscal deficit in sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, strengthening the institutional quality and creating a stable political environment would lessen the accumulation of fiscal deficit.

As of 2010, Christianity was the religion with the most followers worldwide, followed by Islam (Muslims) and Hinduism. In the forty years between 2010 and 2050, it is projected that the landscape of world religions will undergo some noticeable changes, with the number of Muslims almost catching up to Christians. The changes in population sizes of each religious group is largely dependent on demographic development, for example, the rise in the world's Christian population will largely be driven by population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, while Muslim populations will rise across various regions of Africa and South Asia. As India's population is set to grow while China's goes into decline, this will be reflected in the fact that Hindus will outnumber the unaffiliated by 2050. In fact, India may be home to both the largest Hindu and Muslim populations in the world by the middle of this century.

BackgroundPeople of Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asians(SA) ethnic minorities living in Europe have higher risk of stroke than native Europeans(EU). Study objective is to provide an assessment of gender specific absolute differences in office systolic(SBP) and diastolic(DBP) blood pressure(BP) levels between SSA, SA, and EU.Methods and FindingsWe performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies conducted in Europe that examined BP in non-selected adult SSA, SA and EU subjects. Medline, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched from their inception through January 31st 2015, for relevant articles. Outcome measures were mean SBP and DBP differences between minorities and EU, using a random effects model and tested for heterogeneity. Twenty-one studies involving 9,070 SSA, 18,421 SA, and 130,380 EU were included. Compared with EU, SSA had higher values of both SBP (3.38 mmHg, 95% CI 1.28 to 5.48 mmHg; and 6.00 mmHg, 95% CI 2.22 to 9.78 in men and women respectively) and DBP (3.29 mmHg, 95% CI 1.80 to 4.78; 5.35 mmHg, 95% CI 3.04 to 7.66). SA had lower SBP than EU(-4.57 mmHg, 95% CI -6.20 to -2.93; -2.97 mmHg, 95% CI -5.45 to -0.49) but similar DBP values. Meta-analysis by subgroup showed that SA originating from countries where Islam is the main religion had lower SBP and DBP values than EU. In multivariate meta-regression analyses, SBP difference between minorities and EU populations, was influenced by panethnicity and diabetes prevalence.Conclusions1) The higher BP in SSA is maintained over decades, suggesting limited efficacy of prevention strategies in such group in Europe;2) The lower BP in Muslim populations suggests that yet untapped lifestyle and behavioral habits may reveal advantages towards the development of hypertension;3) The additive effect of diabetes, emphasizes the need of new strategies for the control of hypertension in groups at high prevalence of diabetes.

Achieving access to safe water and sanitation still pose major challenges in urban areas of sub-Saharan Africa countries, despite all the progress achieved in the last decade. This study assessed the ability of populations living in poor peri-urban settlements to access improved water and sanitation and identified factors influencing this access, in order to guide sustainable mitigating solutions to address associated health and environmental risks. We conducted a cross-sectional study in six poor peri-urban settlements of Yopougon, the largest municipality of Abidjan. A total of 556 randomly selected households were included. The factors associated with access to improved water and sanitation were identified through explanatory models using multivariate logistic regression. A proportion of 25% of all households assessed did not have access to clean water and 57% lacked improved sanitation. Socioeconomic status and settlement characteristics appear as the main indicators of poor access to reliable water and sanitation in peri-urban settlements. The presence of the household head’s wife at home was associated with greater access to clean water (OR = 3.57; 95% CI: 1.74, 7.31), thus highlighting the important role of women in ensuring access to clean water in these specific environments. Household size, education and religion were not significantly associated with the two considered outcomes. Women therefore should be involved at all levels of programming in water promotion in these settlements to improve the population’s well-being. While religion does not appear to play an important role in access to water and sanitation, successful interventions should involve religious communities because of their large representation.

Prevalence of conditions which raise cardiovascular risk, such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes are seeing a dramatic rise in Sub Saharan Africa. A large proportion of these cases remain undiagnosed and there is limited resource to provide patients with self-management support and education once diagnosed. This study aimed to identify and catalogue community-based assets for the purposes of developing and deploying a screening and education programme for cardiometabolic risk factors (diabetes and hypertension) within religious organisations in a local community in a rural Ghanaian context. We utilised a community-based form of participatory research made up of a number of different components including community-based asset mapping and stakeholder consultation, supplemented by 18 in-depth interviews and 10 focus groups with n = 115 service users, to map existing assets with relevance to cardiometabolic health in this setting and context. Thematic analysis of interview and focus group data was performed to identify themes related to successful implementation of health screening. Two stakeholder workshops with local healthcare professionals, faith leaders and health policy makers were delivered to co-produced a prioritised list of recommendations and ‘asset map’ to aid deployment of mass screening within faith organisations in this context. The findings of this research highlight a number of ‘hidden’ community assets and motivational mechanisms at an individual, community and institutional levels; these have informed a list of recommendations which have been co-developed with the stakeholder group and local community to support the development of effective screening strategies for cardiometabolic conditions within faith organisations in this context. We have identified key mechanisms and assets which would support a sustainable screening approach designed to engage an underserved community at high CVD risk to promote general community health and well-being.

Globally, over 280 million individuals suffer from mental disorders, and almost 85% in low-resource settings do not receive any therapy. In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), many patients are forced to either live with untreated mental illness or seek care from traditional or religious leaders due to the high treatment cost. This literature review identifies pathways to access mental health services and proposed a collaborative model for care across SSA. We systematically searched five electronic databases (Embase and MEDLINE via OVID, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Global Index Medicus) using the following search terms, ‘pathways to care’, ‘mental disorders,’ and ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ for primary studies reporting on pathways to care for mental disorders in SSA. There were no restrictions on the study’s date. Overall, the electronic database search produced 3399 search results, of which we retrieved 194 articles for full-text screening and 29 studies included in the analysis. This study finds that traditional and faith-based healers play an integral role in the pathway to care; more than 70% used traditional and religious healers as the first point of care for mental health care. The median duration for the delay in seeking treatment in a health facility was six months. Patients who sought care from traditional and faith healers were found to have experienced the most prolonged delay without treatment. Age, gender, level of education, marital status, and geographical location were some of the factors associated with the pathway choice. Patients who sought care from traditional and faith healers as the first point of care were found to have experienced the most extended delay without treatment when they arrived at the hospital. The study proposes and recommends a new model for collaboration between biomedical, traditional and faith-based healers that focuses on education through training and adopting a new referral framework.