Religion

Christianity, Africa's most widespread religion, was introduced into northern Africa in the 1st century and spread to the Sudan and Ethiopian regions in the 4th century. Christianity survived in Ethiopia through the Coptic church, but in the other areas, Christianity was swept away by Islam.

The religion was reintroduced and spread through tropical Africa with the 15th-century rise of European overseas expansion. Today Protestant and Catholic groups are about equally represented throughout the continent. Islam, the second most widespread religion in Africa, was introduced throughout northern Africa in the 7th century and in following centuries was spread along the eastern African coast and through the grasslands of western Africa. In the 20th century, Islam has penetrated into the remaining portions of the continent.

The earliest of the Muslim schools of law within the Sunnite tradition, the Maliki, prevails over most of Muslim Africa except in Egypt, the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea), and the eastern African coast. About 15 percent of African peoples practice indigenous, or local, religions. Although these are of great diversity, they tend to have a single god or creator figure and a number of subordinate spirits (nature spirits who inhabit trees, water, animals, and other natural phenomena) and ancestral spirits (founders of the family, lineage, or clan) who affect everyday life.

See African Religions. Certain nativistic religious movements, arising primarily from Christianity, have fused orthodox Christian rites and beliefs with tribal religious elements. Led by individual prophets, these separatist groups have spread throughout Africa, although they appear most widespread and powerful in southern and central Africa.

Small numbers of Jews are located in northern and southern Africa. Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist (Taoist) peoples are scattered through eastern and southern Africa.