Learn About the Three African Areas Where New Temples Were Recently Announced

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By David Schneider, Church News

Among the 20 new temples announced by President Russell M. Nelson in the April 2021 general conference, three locations are in Africa: Kumasi, Ghana; Cape Town, South Africa; and Beira, Mozambique.

Kumasi, Ghana

• This will be the second temple in the country, after the Accra Ghana Temple, dedicated in 2004.
• Ghana has nearly 90,000 Latter-day Saints in 26 stakes and more than 300 congregations.
• Kumasi is in the southern interior rainforest region of Ghana, about 150 miles northwest of Accra, which is on the Atlantic Coast in southeastern Ghana.
• The Kumasi Ghana Stake was organized in 1998; the city now has four stakes.
• Most Latter-day Saints in Ghana live near the Atlantic Coast. All but five of Ghana’s 25 stakes are within 50 miles of the coast.
• The current Accra Ghana Temple District includes 26 stakes in Ghana, 16 in Côte d’Ivoire, seven in Sierra Leone, five in Liberia, two in Togo and one in Benin. The Abidjan Ivory Coast Temple is under construction, and a temple has been announced for Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Cape Town, South Africa

• This will be the third temple in the country, after Johannesburg (dedicated in 1985) and Durban (dedicated in 2020), each about a thousand miles from Cape Town. It will be the first in the western half of the country.
• About 69,000 Latter-day Saints worship in nearly 195 congregations in South Africa.
• Cape Town is located on the shore of Table Bay of the South Atlantic Ocean.
• There are two stakes in the Cape Town area, created in 1984 and 2014. All other South African stakes are in the eastern half of the country.
• Cape Town is currently in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple district, which includes 12 South African stakes, along with Church units in several other African nations.
• The first missionaries to South Africa arrived in Cape Town in 1853, and the first Church-owned meetinghouse was acquired in 1916 in Mowbray, a Cape Town suburb.

Beira, Mozambique

• This will be the first temple in Mozambique.
• The country has more than 15,000 Latter-day Saints and more than 40 congregations.
• There are five stakes in Mozambique: two in Beira, two in the Maputo area of the country’s south and one in northern Mozambique. The first stake in Beira was organized in 2003.
• Beira, a city of more than a half million people, is a central Mozambique coastal city adjacent to the Indian Ocean.
• Mozambique is currently in the Durban South Africa Temple district, which includes five stakes from Mozambique and five from South Africa. Beira is about 1,100 miles from Durban.
• The first official branch of the Church in Maputo, Mozambique, was organized in 1996; the first branch in Beira was organized in 1999. Full-time missionary work began in the country in 1999.

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