Senegal is located at the westernmost point of Africa. Nearly 40 percent of its people are Wolof, and their language is the most widely used in public. Islam is the religion of the vast majority of the population, practiced through involvement in groups known as Muslim brotherhoods. Christians, mostly Catholic, make up 4.2 percent of the population.1
The Seventh-day Adventist missionary work started in the country in 1951 when the first missionaries, Robert Erdmann and his family, came to settle in Senegal. Their first convert was Amadou Ba, from the Puualar ethnic group. He was baptized in 1952. Coming from a Muslim family, his family members persecuted him for becoming a Christian. For this reason, he was sent to Casamance, a town in the southern part of Senegal, as an evangelist. There God used him to convert Albert Sadio, who became the first indigenous Seventh-day Adventist pastor in Senegal. He also was from a Muslim family.2
The church began to have an impact on the community when, in 1959, the Seventh-day Adventist Primary School was commissioned. The second missionary to Senegal started a school in Niaguis, a town 15 kilometers from Ziguichor, the capital city of Casamance region. The headquarters of the church in Senegal was transferred to Niaguis in 1968 by Pastor Adolf Kinder, another missionary. The headquarters returned to Dakar in 1972.3
The church was established in Senegal in 1952, organized in 1976, and reorganized as the Mauritania-Senegal Mission because the country of Mauritania has been joined to Senegal to form a mission. Today, there are six churches in the mission—five in Senegal and one in Mauritania. Total membership in the mission is 684, and the population of the two countries is about 20,176,000.4
Sources
Clark, Andrew, Camille Camara, and John D. Hargreaves. “Senegal.” Accessed April 12, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/place/Senegal.
Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (2018). https://www.adventistyearbook.org/2018.
Notes
-
Andrew Clark, Camille Camara, and John D. Hargreaves, “Senegal,” accessed April 12, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/place/Senegal.↩
-
Personal knowledge of the author as the current president of the Mauritania-Senegal Mission.↩
-
Ibid.↩
-
Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook, “Mauritania-Senegal Mission,” accessed February 24, 2020, https://www.adventistyearbook.org/2018.↩