(ZENIT News / Rome, 01.14.2026).- Around 31% of the world’s Christian population lives in Africa, surpassing Europe, which has 22% of Christians. Sub-Saharan Africa is home to more followers of Christ than any other region in the world, according to data from the Pew Research Center — a specialized research institute –, published on December 9, 2025.
Between 2010 and 2020, the proportion of the Christian population in Sub-Saharan Africa increased to 14.3% of its inhabitants, a rise of 2 percentage points, while the proportion in the Middle East and North Africa grew to 5.6%, an increase of 0.5 percentage points.
Sub-Saharan Africa is now home to the largest number of Christians, with 30.7% of the world’s Christians living in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2020. This different growth rate stems from the much higher fertility rate in Africa than in Europe, and the general decline in the practice of faith among Christians in Western Europe.
Religious change is observed in the proportion of religious groups whose population grew or decreased by at least 5 percentage points between 2010 and 2020. Christians have declined as a percentage of the population in almost all regions, especially in countries in the Americas and Europe. The declines ranged from a 5-point drop in Benin to a 14-point drop in the United States and a 20-point drop in Australia.
Only in Mozambique did the proportion of the Christian population grow substantially between 2010 and 2020, increasing by 5 percentage points.
Few countries have experienced substantial changes in the percentage of Muslims in their population. The global Muslim population grew at a faster rate than other religions between 2010 and 2020, mainly due to population growth. It is estimated that the proportion of Muslims has increased by at least 5 points in Kazakhstan, Benin, and Lebanon, and decreased by 5 points in Tanzania and Oman.
A decrease of 7 points was observed in the Buddhist proportion of the South Korean population and in the proportion of people of other religions in the population of Guinea-Bissau.
The number of Christians increased by 122 million, reaching 2.3 billion worldwide. Their percentage of the global population has decreased by 1.8 percentage points, to 28.8%.
The Pew Research Center’s findings were based on 2,700 censuses and surveys. The study is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes global religious change and its impact on societies.
