A counterterrorism expert in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has predicted that the future of Christianity is on the continent of Africa.

Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to Trump and senior director for counterterrorism since January 2025 made the assertion while fielding questions on U.S counterterrorism strategy from Marissa Streit, the CEO of PragerU, a media organization.

On why the U.S. seems to focus a lot of attention on Africa, especially Nigeria, Gorka explains why he believes Africa is increasingly being targeted by Jihadists.

“Why is Africa important? I’m a Catholic. I think the future of Christendom is going to come out of Africa,” he said, explaining that Africa has “some of the amazing church leaders…who understand what real Christianity is without compromise. Africa is important, and of course it’s going to get targeted by Islamists,” he said.

“Why is ISIS hanging around the Lake Chad Basin? Why are they in the Sahel?” Gorka asked rhetorically.

“Terrorists need ungoverned space. They need somewhere they can hang out and rebuild, and Africa has a lot of ungoverned space. That is why I focus a lot of my attention on that region of the world, where ISIS is trying to reconstitute its caliphate.”

Gorka said that the immediate past U.S. Presidents, such as Joe Biden and Barack Obama, had downplayed the gravity of the situation. He claimed that Obama had told the then incoming Trump administration that the issue of ISIS “Is a generational threat, we just going to have to live with it.”

According to him, Trump said “No” to that claim and instead unleashed the might of the U.S. military and destroyed the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria in a matter of months.

He said that informed the effort the U.S. is making in collaborating with Nigeria and other African nations to address the Jihadist threat in the region, which is also considered a threat to the U.S.

During the interview, Gorka also confirmed that the U.S. and Nigeria carried out a military operation in the North East three weeks ago, resulting in the wiping away of 199 terrorists and seizure of the largest volume of electronic materials since the terror attacks on the U.S. that claimed thousands of lives in 2001.

“And that is priceless, because now our experts are taking apart all of that information, looking at how ISIS is communicating with each other. We are so back in the game of counterterrorism. It is just superlative to watch our professionals,” he said.