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. Moreover, folk religions counted over 33 million adherents, while the unaffiliated were approximately 31 million.

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.

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 and Christianity form the two dominant religions in Nigeria. The basis of traditional religions was systematically exterminated in the religio-cultural life of the Nigerian people after their contact with colonialism. Approximately 90 percent of the Nigerian people have since preferred to be identified with either Islam or Christianity.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 the 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 the Roman and Catholic missionaries to the coastal areas of the Niger-Delta region, although there were few recorded converts and churches built during this period. Christianity soon recorded a boost in the southern region given its opposition to the slave trade and its promotion of Western education. In contrast to the smooth process Christian evangelization underwent in the South, its process in the North was difficult because Islam had already become well-established.Given the philosophy of Islam as a complete way of life for a Muslim, Islam has always been closely attached to politics in Nigeria. The emergence of particular Islamic groups was significantly influenced by international events, particularly the 1979 Iranian revolution and the corresponding disenchantment from the West. These developments shaped Nigerian national politics of the period as Muslims radically redefined their political interests in line with religion and began to clamor for the incorporation of the Sharia legal system into the country’s judicial system. Nigeria then tried to harness opportunities accruable from other Muslim countries by becoming a registered member with the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1985. This inflamed Christians and nurtured the fear of domination by their Muslim counterparts and the possibility of a gradual extinction of their religio-political strength in the national political structure. The distinct religious separation has also 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. 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

AREA_AFF - Geographic area affected by disease

DT_START - Date health event started

DT_END - Date health event ended

TYPE - Type of disease group

DISEASE - Name of disease

NUM_DTH - Number of people reported dead from disease

NUM_AFF - Number of people affected from disease

SOURCE_DT - Source creation date

SOURCE - Primary source

Collection

This HGIS was created using information collected from several websites. EM-DAT, the World Health Organization, and news reports provided information about the outbreaks.

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)

Egunganga, Vincent, Ami Sadiq, and Hir Joseph. All AfricaHIR JOSEPH, "Nigeria: Lassa Fever Returns Vicio." Last modified March 09, 2013. Accessed April 16, 2013. http://allafrica.com/.

EM DAT, "Country Database; Nigeria." Last modified March 2013. Accessed April 16, 2013. http://www.emdat.be/.

World Health Organization, "Global Health Observatory; Nigeria." Last modified 2012. Accessed April 16, 2013. http://www.who.int/en/.

Sources (Metadata)

Encyclopedia of the Nations, "Nigeria Country Specific Information." Last modified 2013. Accessed March 28, 2013. http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com.

Kates, Jennifer, and Alyssa Wilson Leggoe. The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, "HIV/AIDS; The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Nigeria." Last modified October 2005. Accessed April 16, 2013. http://www.kff.org/.

United States Embassy in Nigeria, "Nigeria Malaria Fact Sheet." Last modified December 2011. Accessed April 16, 2013. http://nigeria.usembassy.gov.

World Health Organization, "Global Task Force on Cholera Control." Last modified January 18, 2012. Accessed April 16, 2013. http://www.who.int/.

World Health Organization, "Meningococcal disease: situation in the African Meningitis Belt." Last modified 2012. Accessed March 14, 2013. http://www.who.int/csr/don/2012_05_24/en/index.html.

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...

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.

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 Nigeria. The questionnaires had items relating to religious behavior and beliefs and political attitudes and behaviors. The Kenya file can also be found on the ARDA.

Households, women and children indicators based on data from the DHS surveys in Benin (2001), Burkina Faso (2003), Cote D'Ivoire (1999), Ghana (2008) and Togo (1998). The following indicators have been considered to create raster datasets at 5 arcmin resolution: wealth index, age and sex of the head of household, number of dependent household members (under the age of 5), educational attainment of the respondent, occupation of the respondent, current employment status of the respondent, type and duration employment of the respondent, payment received for work by the respondent, number of sons and daughters away from home, number of years the respondent lived in the current residence, religion of the respondent. This data set has been produced in the framework of the "Climate change predictions in Sub-Saharan Africa: impacts and adaptations (ClimAfrica)" project, Work Package 5 (WP5). More information on ClimAfrica project is provided in the Supplemental Information section of this metadata. This study in WP5 aimed to identify, locate and characterize groups that are vulnerable for climate change conditions in two country clusters; one in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo) and one in East Africa (Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda). Data used for the study include the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) , the Multi Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and the Afrobarometer surveys for the socio-economic variables and grid level data on agro-ecological and climatic conditions.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 2019, the average household size of people unaffiliated with a major religion in the Asia-Pacific region was 3.7 people. In sub-Saharan Africa, this figure was at 5.7 people per household.

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.