Gospel songs thundered through the speakers as televangelist Benny Hinn landed outside Uganda's national stadium last month, before addressing 40,000 enraptured faithful.

Promising prosperity, miracle cures and life-changing spiritual experiences, the "born again" faiths that are the staple of America's multi-millionaire televangelists are fast taking over the world's poorest continent.

For many, they offer hope. In Hinn's front seats, ringed with collection buckets, sat people in wheelchairs, AIDS patients, children with deformities. ...