Albania
Summary
Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912, but was conquered by Italy in 1939 and occupied by Germany in 1943. Communist partisans took over the country in 1944. Albania allied itself first with the USSR (until 1960), and then with China (to 1978). In the early 1990s, Albania ended 46 years of xenophobic communist rule and established a multiparty democracy. The transition has proven challenging as successive governments have tried to deal with high unemployment, widespread corruption, dilapidated infrastructure, powerful organized crime networks, and combative political opponents. [1]
📷: Wikipedia.org
Statistics
People Groups
17
Population
2,839,000
Unreached
1.5%
From the The Joshua Project [2]
In the News
📷: Wikipedia.org
Prayer Guide
The least-reached minorities:
- The Bektashi, a Sufi dervish movement, is deemed heretical by the Sunni majority because its beliefs are more influenced by folk religion and the occult. As many as 600,000 Albanians are associated with this movement. Some have become evangelical believers.
- The Vlach (related to the Romani Gypsy) are looked down upon by many. Most are culturally Orthodox. A few groups work among them and are seeing some fruit.
- The Gorani, Golloborda and Cham are culturally Muslim. They are quite isolated, but there is some ministry among them via short-term teams.
- The Rufai. Another mystic group, similar to the Bektashis but independent from them, is the dervish sect called the Rufai or Rif’ai (howling dervishes).[3]