Province of West Africa

Church of the Province of West Africa
Primate	Daniel Sarfo
Territory	Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone
Members	c. 1,000,000

The Church of the Province of West Africa is a province of the Anglican Communion, covering 17 dioceses in eight countries of West Africa, specifically in Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone. Ghana is the country with most dioceses, now numbering 11. The previous primate of the province was Solomon Tilewa Johnson, Archbishop of Gambia, who died unexpectedly on 21 January 2014.

Missionary work began in Ghana in 1752. The Church of the Province of West Africa was established in 1951 by the bishops of five West African dioceses (Accra, Lagos, Niger, Sierra Leone and the Diocese of Gambia and Guinea) with the consent of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1977 they were joined by the Diocese of Liberia. In February 1979, the new Church of Nigeria was inaugurated as a separate province. In 1981 Sierra Leone was divided into the Diocese of Freetown and the new missionary Diocese of Bo and four new Ghanaian dioceses of Cape Coast, Koforidua, Sekondi and Sunyani/Tamale were formed. In 1985 the Gambia and Guinea diocese was partitioned into English-speaking Gambia and French-speaking Guinea. The Diocese of Asante Mampong, previously a suffragan see to Kumasi, was inaugurated in November 2014.

The final total of 17 represents 11 dioceses in Ghana and 6 in the other five nations. For this reason actions are in hand to move towards making Ghana a separate province. The country already has the status of an "internal province", the archbishop of which is currently (2015) the Primate of the whole Province of West Africa.

Today, the church has to survive in areas of civil unrest where Christians remain a small minority.

Today, there are over one million Anglicans out of an estimated population of 35 million.

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