Emerging Religious Extremism in Historically Peaceful African Countries Cause for Concern: Catholic Aid Agency

Nairobi, 20 August, 2025 / 9:40 PM

Catholic Pontifical and charity foundation, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) International, has raised concern about the growing religious extremism in Africa, with cases of persecution emerging in countries that historically were peaceful.

ACN’s Religious Freedom Report (RFR) 2025 highlights the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Central Africa as one of the countries that have started to experience increasing jihadist attacks, adding to countries such as Nigeria where persecution of Christians is the highest in the world. The other country that is of major concern in the ACN report is Burkina Faso.

In an interview published by ACN ahead of RFR’s launch slated for October 21, the editor-in-chief of the report highlights Africa as the continent of major concern regarding worsening religious extremism.

“One of the continents where the situation, especially during the last decades, has really gotten worse is Africa, where we see that religious extremism has really grown,” Marta Petrosillo says in the interview published on Tuesday, August 19.

She adds, “We see many Jihadist groups perpetrating more attacks, including in countries where interfaith relations were not a problem. Take the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance. Historically there have not been problems between faith communities, and it is majority Christian, but we just witnessed a major attack on Christian faithful.”

“This is definitely something that is spreading in many parts of Africa, and it tends to spread from one country to another,” Ms Petrosillo says, further pointing out the case of Burkina Faso, a country that she says 10 years ago was not among the countries of major concern.

She says that today, Burkina Faso “is unfortunately one of the places in the world where more jihadist attacks happen.”

ACN publishes the RFR after every two years. The first time it was published was in 1999, with the aim of raising awareness, and to report on religious freedom violations.

What makes the ACN report special, Petrosillo says, is it being the only report produced by an NGO that covers the situation in all the countries in the world and for all faith groups.

She says that for ACN, it is important that religious freedom is granted equally to all, “because if religious freedom is denied for one group, sooner or later it will also be denied to others.”

According to Petrosillo, there are three different kinds of religious persecution. She highlights persecution perpetrated by the State, persecution caused by religious extremism, such as Jihadist groups, and the third kind of religious persecution caused by ethno-religious nationalism.

Asked whether religious freedom globally has improved or gotten worse since the last report, the RFR editor-in-chief says, “Since the beginning of the RFR, the situation has tended to get worse, and unfortunately this is expected to be the trend for this next edition, especially in some areas of the world.”

Petrosillo agrees that there might be some risk that countries will be angry with the coverage given to them in the RFR and retaliate against faith groups.

“The RFR is a mirror, always factual and objective in assessing the situation and this is very important. We clearly refer to sources for every incident reported,” she says, and adds, “Of course, there is a risk of retaliation, but we cannot be silent, and I strongly believe that this is the way to change things.”

She says that persecution is a reality for hundreds of millions of people all over the world, adding, “It is important to have this day dedicated to the victims of this kind of violence, to raise awareness, because religious freedom violations affects and causes suffering for many people, even though there’s sometimes a tendency to overlook this phenomenon.”