ACTIVITIES AND WORK OF THE CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES IN EAST AFRICA 1. The Christian missionaries taught and spread Christianity among different communities in East Africa. 2. They built churches as centres for spreading Christianity and worshipping God. 3. They fought against slave trade and resettled slaves at Frere, Bagamoyo and Zanzibar. 4. The Christian missionaries introduced legitimate trade after their abolition of slave trade. 5. They built schools for Africans and taught religion, arithmetic, writing and reading. 6. They trained civil servants, for example doctors, nurses, teachers, and drivers among others. 7. They encouraged technical education, where they taught the Africans the knowledge of brick making, brick laying, farming, cookery, and craft work among others. 10 | P a g e 8. They translated the bible into local languages, for example to Kiswahili and Luganda. 9. They also encouraged the spread of western culture and values, for example fashions, eating habits, dressing and so on. 10. The Christian missionaries discouraged African cultural practices like human sacrifice, murder of twins, worshipping idols and witchcraft. 11. They assisted the colonial rulers to sign political agreements, for example Buganda agreement of 1900. 12. They made East African people to accept colonial rule through their sweet preaching like “blessed are the humble for the kingdom of God is theirs”. That is why it is said that the flag followed the cross. 13. They built hospitals and health centres to provide treatment to mostly the Africans. 14. The Christian missionaries then introduced the use of modern medicine to cure tropical diseases, for example quinine to cure malaria. 15. They constructed roads for easy movement of people and transportation of commodities. 16. The Christian missionaries introduced new crops such as coffee, cotton, tea and tobacco among others. 17. They introduced plantation farming, that is to say farming on a large scale.
Missionaries came to East Africa for various reasons. These were economic, social, and humanitarian in nature. 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. Christian missionaries therefore came with an intention of putting an end to end introducing or replacing it with legitimate trade. Missionaries wanted to resettle the freed slaves in East Africa by setting up resettlement centers both in the interior and at the coast for example at Bagamoyo and Free town near Mombasa. They wanted to check on the spread of Islam in East Africa from the coast with intentions of converting many to Christian...
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