Inside Africa: Harmony thrives in parts of Africa
Weddings in Sierra Leone can sometimes be a little confusing. Though they all celebrate the same union, guests attending are not always united on which God should bless the ceremony. It is not uncommon that a couple in Sierra Leone has partners of different faiths. Although 79% of the country’s population is Muslim, religion is rarely regarded by people as a point of division in society, be it in the family, or in politics. Julius Maada Bio is a Christian man married to a Muslim woman. Despite his interreligious background, he was reelected President in 2023 by the Muslim majority population.
While religion does influence politics in other parts of Africa (such as Nigeria for example), tolerance of other faiths is a common trend across much of the continent, which has seen religious pluralism for a long time. The common misconception that Europeans brought Christianity to Africans along with colonial subjugation is false. The message of Jesus spread across Northeastern Africa not long after his death, and in the early 4th century, under the reign of King Ezana, it was made the official religion of the Kingdom of Aksum, now modern-day Ethiopia, where it has persisted as the principal religion to this day.
Though Islam spread rapidly across the northern part of the continent and down the East African coast through trade relations with the Arabic empire, notions that Muslims severely contested Christians is also not entirely true. European empires introduced Christianity around the 15th century during early trade relations with African kingdoms, before colonization. Both Christianity and Islam have coexisted with traditional African indigenous beliefs and spirituality for a long time, and despite its fair share of interreligious conflicts, the continent has always demonstrated much religious and spiritual diversity, something which lives on to this day.
According to a 2022 Afrobarometer study that surveyed 34 different African nations, 95% of Africans identify with a religion, of which just over half are Christian and just over a third are Muslim. While this distribution spans many countries south of the Sahara and in central Africa, of the respondents surveyed, a staggering 88% said they would not mind if their neighbor was of a different faith than them, and only 18% reported having experienced discrimination based on religion in their lifetimes.
Religious Affiliation Across Africa
Muslim-majority countries such as Niger and Sudan have the lowest tolerance of other religions (at 64% and 68% respectively), and only 11 of the 47 Muslim-majority countries in the world defend the right to religious freedom. Yet eight of these are in Africa, and Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Mali have particularly high tolerance of other religions, which suggests this is not causal.
Percentage of population tolerant of other religions
These figures show that Africa’s strong religious activity and the marked division between Christianity and Islam do not seem to have conflictual consequences. The opposite is true. When asked about the strength and unity of local communities, almost 70% believe that communities are stronger when there is more ethnic and religious diversity (The data is overwhelmingly positive and shows no correlation across countries with majorities in different faiths). This not only reveals much about Africans’ acceptance of others and comfort with diversity but also contradicts common ideas about Africa, which is often perceived and analyzed as war-torn and politically divided due to religious and ethnic intolerance.
The same goes for traditional religions and indigenous beliefs. Rather than conflicting with Christianity and Islam, they often serve as complimentary spirituality. A study from 2010 showed that almost a third of Africans believed sacrifices to spirits or ancestors would prevent something bad from happening to them. “Large numbers of Africans actively participate in Christianity and Islam yet also believe in witchcraft, evil spirits, sacrifices to ancestors, traditional religious healers, reincarnation and other elements of traditional African religions.”
The Professor of African Religious Traditions at Harvard, Jacob Olupona, noted in an interview that “the word ‘religion’ is problematic for many Africans because it suggests that religion is separate from other aspects of one’s culture, society, or environment. But for many Africans, religion can never be separated from all these. […] Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death.” Olupona confirms that African indigenous practices are still common on the continent and that there is also much influence in the African diaspora.
Though he also claims that traditional beliefs have dwindled with the spread of Christianity and Islam, which does not accommodate traditional religions as it used to, his statement nonetheless affirms that from a spiritual point of view, there is room in African cultures for incorporating multiple faiths. Olupona notes in the interview that because indigenous African spiritual beliefs have an oral tradition, rather than being written down and codified, they are flexible and adaptable to other religious ideas. He tells of his father who, an Anglican priest, never opposed African tradition and beliefs as long as they were compatible with Christianity. “Holding or maintaining to a uniform doctrine is not the essence of indigenous African religions.”
Therefore, if anything, religion is an agent that keeps civil society together rather than apart. When respondents of the Afrobarometer study were asked which public figures they trusted most, religious and traditional leaders ranked significantly higher than political and governmental figures. This likely has cultural reasons that link to traditional beliefs, practices, and values which, though present in some ideologies (such as socialist Ujamaa in Tanzania), may not always be represented in more Western political theory.
Another reason for distrust in politics is also corruption. While almost half of respondents perceive most or all of the Police to be corrupt, around 35% perceive government officials to be corrupt, only 17% viewed religious leaders as corrupt, and 34% believed none were. Faith in politicians is weak. Faith in religious figures is strong.
It is not always well placed though. In Zimbabwe, for example, Pentecostal prophets have allegedly infiltrated themselves into the Zunde Ramambo system, a traditional social welfare system operated by local chiefs. Religious influence in these kinds of traditional systems infuses welfare many beneficiaries are dependent on with religious ties which, in the case of the Pentecostal church, has been reported to be problematic.
The Pentecostal church, the fastest-growing strand of Christianity on the continent, is known to have many ‘prophets’ receiving funds through donations made by followers and protection from political connections. They generally hold supreme powers over religious matters and faithful communities, and their influence often exceeds the realms of religious preaching. Controversies surrounding figures are well known, as notorious pastor TB Joshua, who for years ran a fake healing scheme that broadcasted miraculous healings of sick believers across the world, and enjoyed the wealth and fame off the back of torture and abuse of employees and patients until he died in 2021.
These incidents however don’t diminish the no less impressive unity Africans across the country show in the face of religious diversity. During a recent trip to Pemba, the small island north of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, a taxi driver told me that on the island, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, the few Christian neighbors are always invited to Eid-al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan. During Christmas, Christians invite Muslims. The island is small, yet the custom reaches far. The same cordial rites are practiced in Sierra Leone, on the opposite end of the continent.
