I hear Africans believe in many gods?
This depends on the ethnic group one is talking about. There are African groups that are monotheistic and others with traditional pantheons at the head of which is the supreme deity. Of the Chokwe people, whose land stretches from the northeastern section of Angola into Zambia and Zaire, Joyce Moss and George Wilson paint a similar eschatological portrait:
The Chokwe believe in an all-powerful being who created the earth. However, according to their belief, this god has no concern for what people do on earth. Instead, nature spirits and spirits of Chokwe ancestors, which derive their power from the supreme being, watch over earthly affairs. A central sacred ground in Chokwe villages is reserved for ancestor worship and reverence to these nature spirits. Individuals are responsible for honoring their maternal ancestors. (108)
Monotheism is typical among Africans in Cameroon and Kenya, for example. The Kumbo, Mankon, and Bali peoples of the Bamenda Grassfields of Cameroon, for example, are monotheistic. To the Kumbo people, God is Nyuybom; to the Mankon people, God is Vigui ; to the Bali People, He is Nyikob. Neal Sobania confirms this condition in Kenya:
For many of the peoples who live around or near Mount Kenya, this snow-capped peak is understood to be the home of Enkai or Ngai, a similar variation of this name. Among many of the people who live in the north and who speak Cushistic languages, God is called Waq or Waqqa. (35)
One will be correct to assert then, that some Africans have and do believe in many minor gods over whom there is the supreme deity.
This complex belief system, much akin to that of Native Americans, is effectively conveyed by Ferkiss:
Africans do believe in the universality of spirit and that the order of causality in the universe is such that the acts of spirits affect daily life and can be influenced through religious practices (or manipulated through witchcraft). They recognize, however, a hierarchy of spiritual beings, and all traditional African religious systems conceive of the spirits as holding their power as surrogates to a Supreme Power (35-36)
What religions exist in Africa?
Almost any kind of religion can be found in Africa; it is a question of how popular it is. There are traditional African religious practices, there is Christianity, Islam, and a host of other Eastern religions sprinkled around the place.
Do the different religions in Africa co-exist peacefully?
A question such as this warrants a recall of the fact that some of the different religions in Africa today are foreign to the continent; religions such as Islam, and Christianity, amongst others are examples. Generally speaking, therefore, one can observe that the different religions in Africa do co-exist amicably but from time to time, Moslems and Christians do clash in parts of Africa, like in Northern Nigeria, a notorious offender in this light, and these clashes usually result in the death of many people.
How many times a day do Africans pray?
The African's life is totally interwoven with his traditional religious practices, and this makes it hard to determine how many times a day an African has to pray, since everything is tied to prayers as he invokes his ancestors in whatever he does. In the words of Kofi Awoonor, "To speak of the nature of religion in any traditional African society is to attempt to isolate what is the very essence of the society. For the whole society is based on the proper direction of the religious and spiritual obligations of man toward the hierarchical structure in which he takes his own place in all the three stages of his life (51). Steven J. Salm and Toyin Falola are saying the same thing when they state that "Religion is inseparable from virtually every aspect of Ghanaian life and is important in the determination of worldview. Religion commands a central place in the organization of social, political, and cultural life, and regulates the relationship between people and their physical and spiritual environment (33). Religion became formalized and institutionalized with the coming of alien religious practices, with prayer hours being counted and special places being reserved for prayers. The result is that with Africans who are Moslems, for example, they have to pray five times a day as per the tenets of Islam. Christians now pray as often as they wish to, but they must go to church at least once a week on Sunday. There are those who go to church on a daily basis.
