West Africa territory in the south Atlantic Ocean. In the United Nations scheme of African regions, the region includes 17 states and the island of Saint Helena, an overseas territory: Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Niger are mostly in the Sahel, a transition zone between the Sahara desert and the Sudanian Savanna, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Nigeria compose Guinea, the traditional name for the area near the Gulf of Guinea, Cape Verde is an island country in the Atlantic Ocean, Mauritania lies in the Maghreb, the northwestern region of Africa that has historically been
Church of the Province of West Africa in the other seven 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. The polity of the Church of the Province of West Africa is episcopal church governance, which is the same as other Anglican