The Tenth Parallel: Africa’s fault line between Christianity and Islam

From Senegal in the West to Somalia in the East runs a fault line, ‘the knife edge where Islam and Christianity meet’. This area of land separates the continent’s 400 million Muslims from its 500 million Christians.

In her New York Times bestseller The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, award-winning journalist and poet Eliza Griswold spent seven years exploring the relationship between religion and conflict along this circle of latitude 10 degrees north of the equator.

Religious beliefs are deep rooted and in areas such as Northern Nigeria this fault line has seen violent clashes between Muslims and Christians. But many believe this fault line presents a chance to develop peace and prosperity between faiths.

Join us to discuss Africa’s fault line with:

Eliza Griswold, award-winning journalist, poet and author of New York Times Bestselling and 2011 Anthony J. Lukas prize winning The Tenth Parallel. She is currently senior fellow at the New America Foundation and former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She reports on religion, conflict and human rights. Her reportage and poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, Harpers, The New Republic, among many others.

Chaired by Solomon Mugera, the BBC’s Africa Editor.

Picture Credit: Seamus Murphy