From The New York Times:
To understand why Pope Leo XIV is traveling to Africa less than a year into his papacy, consider that one in five of the world’s Catholics now live on the continent. His 10-day trip begins Monday and includes visits to Algeria, Angola, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea. Aside from Algeria, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, the other three countries are home to substantial numbers of Catholics.
In a sign of the region’s growing importance to the Roman Catholic Church, the pope, the first from the United States, has chosen to visit Africa before traveling to his homeland or South America, where he spent two decades of his career before assuming the papacy.