Christian missions were organized efforts to spread the Christian faith for the purpose of extending religious teaching at home or abroad. Their coming of Christian missionaries to East Africa and Africa in general was based on a number of motives which were humanitarian, economic, political and social in nature. The Portuguese were the first to introduce Christianity to the east African coast in the 15th c. this attempt however had little success. By the 19th century, a number of missionary groups worked in East Africa and these included; The Church Missionary Society The Holy Ghost Fathers

Reasons for the coming of Christian missionaries in East Africa The missionaries had the ambition to spread Christianity to the people of East Africa. This would be through preaching and teaching the holy gospel so that many would get converted to Christianity. They wanted to fight against slave trade in East Africa. Earlier travelers like John Speke and James Grant, H.M. Stanley, Dr. David Livingstone and others had reported about the evils of slave trade in East Africa. They wanted to check on the spread of Islam in East Africa from the coast with intentions of converting many to Christianity. Some missionaries came because they had been invited by certain African chiefs, For example, Mutesa I of Buganda wrote a letter through H.M Stanley inviting missionaries to Buganda. They came to establish legitimate trade in East Africa. They, for instance wanted to trade in items like glass, cloths, etc. as Dr. Livingstone told Cambridge University students, “I go back to Africa to make an open pass f

by male recruit

This paper will attempt to throw some light on what was widely described as one of the most "delicate" issues of the Christian mission in Africa -- the policy toward Negro missionaries. Although it was widely discussed during the first four decades of the twentieth century, little detailed evidence of attitudes to Negro mission has survived. This is understandable; as neither colonial governments nor whi

ound it difficult to explain that this was necessarily the result of discriminatory policies; for, on the one hand, many of the white East African missionaries would openly encourage Negro students to awake to their missionary responsibilities in Africa; on the other, it was hard to determine whether any candidates had come forward and, if they had, whether they had been adequately qualified. It was further well known that many American Negro students had not the slightest interest in the missionaries' continued appeals to realize their obligations in Africa.5 Yet despite the necessary sketchiness of the primary sources, the subject must bear further investigation, if for no other reason than because two most distinguished Negro scholars -- W.E.B. DuBois and Carter G. Woodson6 -continued over a period of twenty years to believe that opportunities for Negro mission had been deliberately

In addition, what little has been written on this question in more recent times has tended to be dogmatic and divided. Thus Harold Isaacs has claimed that "with but rare exceptions, the large white Christian denominations seldom wished to send Negro workers into the African vineyards. Even when they did wish it, they seldom did so, and when they did, they did it sparingly and not for long. "7 And against this the authors of the Hoover Institution series on Ameri cans in Black Africa have concentrated on laying the entire responsibility for discrimination upon the colonial governments in Africa; "White Christian churches," they add, "cannot be blamed for thi