April 30, 2010. A study released this month shows Christianity is now the dominant religion in sub-Sahara Africa. Where once Christians and Muslims combined made up less than a quarter of its population, the region now has 21 percent of the world’s Christians.
The number of Muslims grew from 11 million in 1900 to 234 million in 2010.
Christians have grown from 7 million in 1990 to the current 470 million. Fifty-seven percent of the population is Christian while 29 percent is Muslim.
Now this region between the Sahara Desert and the Cape of Good Hope is home to one-in-five of all of the Christians in the world.
The study was conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and involved 25,000 face-to-face interviews in 90 countries representing the sub-Sahara Africa.
The report notes that sub-Saharan African Christians and Muslims generally have a positive view of each other, and in most countries relatively few people think that there is hostility against Muslims or Christians.
While sub-Sahara Africa has almost twice as many Christians as Muslims, on the African continent as a whole the two faiths are roughly balanced, with 400 million to 500 million followers each.
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