Sub-Saharan Africa
Religion

Religion in Sub Saharan Africa

African countries below the Sahara are largely Christian, while those above the Sahara, in North Africa, are predominantly Islamic. There are also Muslim majorities in parts of the Horn of Africa (Djibouti and Somalia) and in the Sahel and Sudan regions (the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Burkina Faso), as well as significant Muslim communities in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and on the Swahili Coast (Tanzania, Mozambique and Kenya). West Africa is the only subregion of sub-Saharan Africa which has a Muslim majority population, and Nigeria has the largest Muslim population in sub-Saharan Africa.

Mauritius is the only country in Africa to have a Hindu majority. In 2012, sub-Saharan Africa constituted in absolute terms the world's third largest Christian population, after Europe and Latin America respectively. In 2012, sub-Saharan Africa also constituted in absolute terms the world's third largest Muslim population, after Asia and the Middle East and North Africa respectively.

Traditional African religions are also commonly practiced across sub-Saharan Africa, with these religions being especially common in South Sudan, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, and Cameroon. Traditional African religions can be broken down into linguistic cultural groups, with common themes. Among Niger–Congo -speakers is a belief in a creator god or higher deity, along with ancestor spirits, territorial spirits, evil caused by human ill will and neglecting ancestor spirits, and priests of territorial spirits. New world religions such as Santería, Vodun, and Candomblé, would be derived from this world. Among Nilo-Saharan speakers is the belief in Divinity; evil is caused by divine judgement and retribution; prophets as middlemen between Divinity and man. Among Afro-Asiatic -speakers is henotheism, the belief in one's own gods but accepting the existence of other gods; evil here is caused by malevolent spirits. The Semitic Abrahamic religion of Judaism is comparable to the latter world view. San religion is non-theistic but a belief in a Spirit or Power of existence which can be tapped in a trance-dance; trance-healers.

Generally, traditional African religions are united by an ancient complex animism and ancestor worship.

Traditional religions in sub-Saharan Africa often display complex ontology, cosmology and metaphysics. Mythologies, for example, demonstrated the difficulty fathers of creation had in bringing about order from chaos. Order is what is right and natural and any deviation is chaos. Cosmology and ontology is also neither simple or linear. It defines duality, the material and immaterial, male and female, heaven and earth. Common principles of being and becoming are widespread: Among the Dogon, the principle of Amma (being) and Nummo (becoming), and among the Bambara, Pemba (being) and Faro (becoming).

Sub-Saharan traditional divination systems display great sophistication. For example, the bamana sand divination uses well established symbolic codes that can be reproduced using four bits or marks. A binary system of one or two marks are combined. Random outcomes are generated using a fractal recursive process. It is analogous to a digital circuit but can be reproduced on any surface with one or two marks. This system is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa.
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