page_title: Baháʼí Faith by continent
section_title: Africa
hierarchical_section_title: Baháʼí Faith by continent / Africa
caption_attribution_description: Abdu'l-Baha
context_page_description: The Baháʼí Faith is a diverse and widespread religion founded by Baháʼu'lláh in the 19th century in Iran. Baháʼí sources usually estimate the worldwide Baháʼí population to be above 5 million. Most encyclopedias and similar sources estimate between 5 and 6 million Baháʼís in the world in the early 21st century.
  The Baháʼí Faith's growing presence across the world can be shown in stages. First the religion originated in Qajar Persia out of the Bábí religion and spread through the middle east and lands directly adjacent from 1844 to c.1892. Then it internationalized to a particular degree when it moved out of Islamic dominant countries and cultures and came to many countries in the West, a period from c.1892 to c.1953. During this period, for example, sixty percent of the British Baháʼí community eventually relocating. And then a significantly internationalized stage of an almost worldwide presence or "global" presence since 1953. This was accomplished by what Baháʼís call "pioneering".
context_section_description: The Baháʼí Faith in Africa marks moment when most of the leading figures of the religion were present on the continent. Among its earliest contacts with the religion came in Egypt. The Baháʼí Faith in Egypt begins perhaps with the first Baháʼís arriving in 1863. Baháʼu'lláh, founder of the religion, was himself briefly in Egypt in 1868 when on his way to imprisonment in ʻAkká.
  Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl-i-Gulpáygání, often called Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl, was the first prominent Baháʼí to live in Africa and made some of the first big changes to the community in Egypt. Abdu'l-Fadl first came to Cairo in 1894 where he settled for several years. He was the foremost Baháʼí scholar and helped spread the Baháʼí Faith in Egypt, Turkmenistan, and the United States. In Egypt, he was successful in converting some thirty of the students of Al-Azhar University, the foremost institution of learning in the Sunni Muslim world.
  ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, head of the religion after Baháʼu'lláh, lived in Egypt for several years and several people came to meet him there: Stanwood Cobb, Wellesley Tudor Pole, Isabella Grinevskaya, and Louis George Gregory, later the first Hand of the Cause of African descent, visited ʻAbdu'l-Bahá at Ramleh in 1911. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá then embarked on several trips to the West taking an ocean liner for the first one on August 11, 1911. He left on the next trip left March 25, 1912. One of the earliest Baháʼís of the west and a Disciple of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Lua M. Getsinger, died in 1916 and she was buried in Egypt near Mírzá Abu'l-Faḍl.
  ʻAbdu'l-Bahá wrote a series of letters, or tablets, to the followers of the religion in the United States in 1916-1917; these letters were compiled together in the book Tablets of the Divine Plan. The eighth and twelfth of the tablets mentioned Africa and were written on 19 April 1916 and 15 February 1917, respectively. Publication however was delayed in the United States until 1919 – published in Star of the West magazine on 12 December 1919. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá mentions Baháʼís traveling "…especially from America to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia, and travel through Japan and China. Likewise, from Germany teachers and believers may travel to the continents of America, Africa, Japan and China; in brief, they may travel through all the continents and islands of the globe" and " …the anthem of the oneness of the world of humanity may confer a new life upon all the children of men, and the tabernacle of universal peace be pitched on the apex of America; thus Europe and Africa may become vivified with the breaths of the Holy Spirit, this world may become another world, the body politic may attain to a new exhilaration…."
  Shoghi Effendi, who was appointed the leader of the religion after ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's death, travelled through Africa in 1929 and again in 1940 on personal trips. 
  At the other extreme of the continent the Baháʼí Faith in South Africa struggled with issues under the segregated social pattern and laws of Apartheid in South Africa. The Baháʼí community decided that instead of dividing the South African Baháʼí community into two population groups, one black and one white, they instead limited membership in the Baháʼí administration to black adherents, and placed the entire Baháʼí community under the leadership of its black population.  In 1997 the National Spiritual Assembly presented a Statement to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa which said in part:
  Abhorring all forms of prejudice and rejecting any system of segregation, the Baháʼí Faith was introduced on a one-to-one basis and the community quietly grew during the apartheid years, without publicity.  Despite the nature of the politics of that time, we presented our teachings on unity and the oneness of humankind to prominent individuals in politics, commerce and academia and leaders of thought including State Presidents.... [b]oth individual Baháʼís and our administrative institutions were continually watched by the security police.... Our activities did not include opposition to the previous Government for involvement in partisan politi
caption: ʻAbdu'l-Bahá
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