Timbuktu the Center of the World

"Christianity came to Africa some fifty years after the death of Jesus, spread by disciples down through North Africa as far as Ethiopia. The next Christians in Africa were Portuguese and Spanish explorers who came ashore to plant crosses in the sand and claim the Cape of Good Hope for God and king. In the 1800s, missionary societies mounted efforts to convert the African heathen, and began constructing the networks of mission schools and hospitals that still operate today. There were 8.7 million Christians in Africa in 1900; there are 390 million today. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity, in Massachusetts, says that the technical center of the Christian world-the point where there are equal numbers of Christians to the north, south, easy and west-is Timbuktu, in mostly Muslim Mali, and predicts that that point will shift east to Nigeria in the next hundred years." Stephanie Nolan, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, p 261.