Africa
Africa’s Catholic churches face competition and a troubled legacy as they grow
Pope Francis has completed his seven-day tour of three African countries: Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius. It was a significant trip for a number of reasons.
During his visit, the pope spoke on issues of peace and ecological sustainability that these countries are facing. Mozambique recently signed a peace accord with longtime rebels, and the country is still recovering from the cyclone earlier this year that killed over 1,000 people. Madagascar faces severe deforestation, and Mauritius too faces risks from climate change.
Africa has the world’s third largest Catholic population, after the Americas and Europe. Nearly 1 out of every 5 Africans – 19.2% – is Catholic. The Pew Research Center expects the number of African Christians south of the Sahara, including Catholics, to double by 2050.
From my perspective as a scholar of African religions, however, the pope’s visit needs to be understood against the background of the church’s longer history in Africa and the current challenges Catholicism faces in the continent.
Unbiased. Nonpartisan. Factual.
Early Catholic history in Africa
Although Catholicism in Africa expanded dramatically under European colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, the church’s roots in Africa go back to its earliest days.
Christianity emerged in Africa among first-century Jewish communities in Alexandria, Egypt. Many early, influential church figures were North African.
After the Islamic conquest of North Africa – from 634 to 711 A.D. – however, Islam grew faster than Christianity, making it the region’s dominant religion.
Muslim traders then took Islam across the Sahara Desert to West Africa and over the Indian Ocean to eastern Africa.
Spread of Christianity
The later arrival of Catholic missionaries on the western, central, southern and eastern coasts of Africa spread Christianity across the continent.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Portuguese came to Africa by ship and began winning converts in the Central African kingdom of Kongo.
On the other side of the continent, in today’s Mozambique, missionaries established Catholic communities that would eventually become the contemporary Mozambican Church.
French missionaries arrived in Madagascar in 1640. With the help of early converts, they produced a Catholic catechism, or teaching manual, in Malagash, the island’s indigenous language.
Because Catholic Portugal, and later France, expanded the trans-Atlantic slave trade, both priests and slave merchants followed in their wake.
African Catholics and European missionaries nonetheless protested against the slave trade. Even the Vatican condemned slavery in the 1680s. But many bishops and priests already possessed slaves, and the Vatican enslaved Africans to man its ships.
The church’s complicity in Africa’s subjugation only intensified in the colonial era in the 19th and 20th centuries as the church founded parishes, schools and hospitals across the continent, often with the encouragement of colonial authorities.
Reforms and end of colonialism
Catholic missionaries worked mostly in European languages, contributing to the continent’s linguistic and cultural colonization.
In fact, colonization and evangelization occurred in lockstep. The Portuguese colonized Mozambique; the French, Madagascar; and Britain, after initial French occupation, Mauritius.
But Catholic missionaries also criticized colonialism. In 1971, for example, authorities in Mozambique, still under Portuguese rule, expelled a Catholic order for criticizing the colonial regime for preventing missionaries from properly serving Mozambicans.
Elsewhere on the continent, during Africa’s transition from colonial rule to independence, from the late 1950s to 1980, many priests supported emerging ethnic and nationalist movements.
The long-term outcomes of these Catholic-backed independence movements have been mixed.
In what was to become Zimbabwe, for example, bishops supported resistance against white-led Rhodesia from the 1960s to 1980 but unwittingly brought dictator Robert Mugabe, who died recently, to power.
But in Malawi, Catholics in 1994 helped unseat the repressive president, Hastings Banda, and establish multiparty democracy.
And in many French-speaking African countries, bishops served as neutral mediators who led national conversations between autocratic rulers and civilians throughout the 1990s, often achieving democratic reforms.
Rise of Pentacostalism, Islam
To many Africans today, in the wake of independence and the church’s support for it, the Catholic Church has distanced itself from its colonial past to become an institution associated with sociopolitical reform, education and health care.
This accounts in part for its substantial growth in the three countries visited by the pope.
In Mozambique, Catholics are 30.3% of the population, the country’s largest religious group, surpassing indigenous religious practitioners and Muslims. In Mauritius, at 27.2%, Catholics take second place to Hindus but outnumber Muslims. And in Madagascar, they come in third at 21.7%.
But the church faces new challenges.
In 1970, Pentecostals represented less than 5% of all Africans. They now stand at 12%, a significant shift. In Mozambique alone, Pentecostals are the second largest Christian community.
And Islam is growing faster in Africa than Christianity. By 2050, African Muslims south of the Sahara are expected to increase from 30% to 35% of Africa’s population.
The pope’s visit, then, reflects a strategic commitment to the continent, for good reason.
The battle for souls is a struggle for statistics, enmeshed in the changing loyalties of the world’s largest Christian church.
Immediately after getting drafted, Maluach was asked: “So many people, when they think about Africa, think about strife, think about war, think about not so great things about the continent, let alone South Sudan. How much of a responsibility do you think you have in changing perceptions of what people think Africa is in terms of thinking more about the resources, thinking about the people of Africa and South Sudan, specifically?”
Maluach’s native country, South Sudan, is undergoing a humanitarian crisis. His family fled the country to a suburb of Kampala, Uganda, in search of safety and opportunity during the South Sudan crisis. He now hopes to change the narrative about the region by highlighting its good parts on the world stage.
“I think about showing them the good parts of Africa,” Maluach said at the press conference after he was drafted. “I’m thinking about showing them the great places in Africa, like Kigali, whether it’s Senegal, whether it’s the safaris in Africa, and showing them the cultures we have and the people we have, which is different from the stuff they see on TV. I just want to change the narrative, the narrative of our people and how they see my continent.”
Maluach was born in Rumbek, once an important city in South Sudan that was ravaged by the country’s civil war. The 7’2″ center’s road to success was far from easy. The nearest basketball court to his house was nearly an hour’s walk away and usually packed. Moreover, he played his first game in Crocs, not basketball shoes. But his dedication was enough to catch the eye of local coaches Wal Deng and Aketch Garang.
Through the effort that he put in, Maluach made it to the NBA Academy Africa in Saly, Senegal, then to the Duke Blue Devils, and now the Suns. He hopes the moment inspires kids on the continent.
“Living in Africa, I had the whole continent on my back. Giving hope to young kids,” he said after the Suns selected him No. 10 overall.
Maluach considers basketball a gift God gave him, and hopes to finish off his NBA career as a Hall of Famer.
After making history as Nigeria’s first female fighter pilot, Flt. Lt. Kafayat Sanni has emerged as the Best Allied Student and won the Best Assistant Commandant Paper award at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Accra, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
In a statement released on Saturday and cited by NAN, the Director of Public Relations and Information of the Nigerian Air Force, Air Commodore Ehimen Ejodame, said the awards were presented on Friday during the College graduation ceremony which had in attendance top military personnel and dignitaries from across Africa.
Ejodame recalled how Sanni first made the news in 2019 after being decorated as the Nigerian Air Force’s first female fighter pilot following her pilot training in the U.S.
“Since then, she has flown the Alpha Jet as well as undertaken training sorties on the Super Mushshak as a prolific instructor pilot, producing and mentoring younger pilots for the NAF,” Ejodame said.
“Her outstanding performance at GAFCSC not only symbolises personal excellence and resilience but also underscores Nigeria’s growing leadership in regional defence and commitment to gender inclusion in the armed forces.
“This remarkable achievement further reflects the Nigerian Air Force’s strategic investment in human capital development under the visionary leadership of the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar,” he said.
In 2017, Sanni emerged as the overall best pilot at the Nigerian Air Force’s 401 training school before she moved to the United States to train at the U.S. Aviation Leadership program.
Upon completion, Sanni returned to Nigeria, where she, alongside 12 new fighter pilots, was decorated.
As Sanni became the first female fighter pilot in the 55-year history of the Nigerian Air Force, her colleague, Tolulope Arotile, also became the Force’s first female combat helicopter pilot.
“It is a privilege for me to be winged as the first female fighter pilot in the Nigerian Air Force,” Sanni said after being decorated.
Sanni said at the time she had always wanted to be a fighter pilot, and “I was just lucky to be chosen.”
“It was also my choice. It was what I wanted to do. And I felt that everyone is not supposed to fold their arms and watch what is happening in our country.
“Everyone could always play their part. So, I did not think there was any reason for me to think that it is not possible for me to actually fly the jet because there was no female that ever flew the jet. I believe I could achieve it and I did,” she said.
She then went on to advise younger girls to “never say no to opportunities.”
“They should always strive to be the best and put in their efforts. They should never look at anything that seems to want to overpower or overshadow them. For me, you can always attempt things and if they do not work out well; fine. But at every point in time, you just need to put in your best.”
U.S. hotel chains Hilton and Marriott have announced African expansion drives to tap into the continent’s rapid tourism growth.
Rising business and leisure travel on the continent has made it increasingly attractive for multinational companies and Hilton said on Wednesday that it plans to more than triple its African portfolio to more than 160 hotels.
The company plans to enter Angola, Ghana and Benin for the first time while returning to Madagascar and Tanzania, its statement said without providing a specific time horizon for the expansion plans.
Marriott expects to add 50 properties by 2027, it said on Wednesday. Those will include entry into five new countries: Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar and Mauritania.
The group’s existing African portfolio encompasses nearly 150 properties and 26,000 rooms across 20 countries and 22 brands.
Airlines have also increased their African capacity.
Emirates now offers 161 weekly flights across Africa, recently adding daily services to Entebbe and Addis Ababa. United Airlines launched a direct Washington-Dakar route in May and Delta will begin a seasonal daily flight to Accra in December.
International arrivals to the continent rose 9% year on year in the first quarter of 2025, the United Nations World Tourism Organization says, 16% above the same period of pre-pandemic 2019.
That momentum is translating into economic impact. Tourism accounts for between 3% and 7% of gross domestic product in countries such as Kenya, Morocco and South Africa, and up to 15% in tourism-heavy economies such as Namibia, World Bank and national statistics show.
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