SAKER, ALFRED

born July 21, 1814, Wrotham, Kent, Eng. died March 12, 1880, Peckham, London missionary who established the first British mission in the Cameroons and who was, in the opinion of David Livingstone, the most important English missionary in West Africa. Saker founded the city of Victoria, Cameroon, and translated the Bible into Douala, the local language. Saker first went to Africa in 1844 as part of a missionary team on the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko). He established his first missionary station on the continent near present-day Douala, Cameroon, in 1845. Saker had been a manual labourer before he became a missionary, and he taught carpentry and agriculture to the tribes along the coast. When the Spanish government expelled the Protestant missionaries from Fernando Po in 1858, Saker undertook the construction of Victoria as a permanent missionary station. There he printed his Douala translation of the Bible in 1872. He left Africa in 1876.