00:00Why is half of Africa Muslim and the other half Christian?
00:03Look, there's almost a line separating Islam from Christianity.
00:06Something blocked the expansion of Islam to the south, but what?
00:10Well, first of all, Christianity was the first to appear and spread in Africa.
00:14In the second and third centuries, it became so powerful that it reached Ethiopia.
00:18Fun fact, that's why Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian kingdoms in history.
00:21Long before Spain and France.
00:23However, Islam then appeared in the seventh century and replaced Christianity.
00:26Realize that by 709, all of North Africa was conquered by Muslims.
00:30Then, Islam gradually spread south of the Sahara through trade.
00:34Except that something is blocking it here, and we'll see about that later.
00:37Let us return to Christianity, which very slowly began to re-emerge from the 15th century onwards with the Portuguese explorations.
00:43But contrary to popular belief, evangelization, that is to say the conversion of populations to Christianity,
00:48It was initially a huge flop, like the last season of Stranger Things.
00:52Look, in 1910, there were 8.5 million Christians.
00:55It's nothing at all.
00:56And today, we're at 631 million.
00:59That's not nothing at all.
01:00So you see, the Christianization of Africa is extremely recent.
01:02And it wasn't colonization that converted people.
01:05That's something else.
01:06In the 20th century, colonization imposed Christianity, with missionaries and the schools they founded.
01:11But very quickly, the populations rejected this violent Christianity that came with the colonists.
01:16As a result, they are reclaiming Christianity and creating their own independent churches, by and for Africans.
01:22So, what prevented Islam from spreading here?
01:24Firstly, there's the rainforest, which is more complicated to cross than the desert, in addition to the diseases.
01:29Secondly, the southern kingdoms were very attached to their ancestral religion.
01:33And thirdly, there was less trade to be done.
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