Mbiti argued that “the whole of existence is a religious phenomenon; man is a deeply religious being living in a religious universe (…) Africans have their own ontology, but it is a religious ontology, and to understand their religions we must penetrate that ontology”

The key to understand such an ontology is an understanding of Africans’ notion of time which for Africans, Mbiti argued, “is a two-dimensional phenomenon, with a long past, a present and virtually no future“