This study has explored the livelihood struggles of the African workers at the UMCA mission, many of whom had recently emerged from a background of slavery. For the period that this study covers, the mission offered livelihood opportunities that did not just serve as vocational training, but as survival for many African children, women and men. As we have seen, during most of the 1864–1926 period, the formal education that the mission offered was not necessarily seen as the primary tool that it would later become for overcoming livelihood and status struggles. Often, markers of coastal sophistication, such as clothing or knowledge of Swahili, had greater social currency, while the coast remained a prime source of paid employment, often preferable to conditions offered by the mission. The focus in the scholarly literature on the central role of missions in fostering the emergence of an educated African elite that would, over time, challenge colonialism and inherit the colonial state, has however tended to overshadow the fact that in 1900 it was not clear that formal mission education would become so widespread and desirable and could be crucial to securing a good livelihood. In short, from the 1860s to the 1910s, the mission was initially a space in which people could – often inventively – make a living through employment and patronage. Although not all African workers in the mission were Christian, most Christians were mission employees (usually teachers) and their families. For those who were both workers and Christians, being Christian was, in important ways, a livelihood.

Concomitantly, mission stations were continually sites of contestation that served changing purposes. During the 1870s, the mission station in Magila was focused on surviving physically and politically, as the region was politically unstable and prone to slave-raiding and violence. Several chiefs converted to Christianity and in doing so, claimed mission allegiance, though their impact on mission development was short-lived as most of them died or lost power under German rule in the 1890s. A more enduring impact was made by child-pawns who were traded to the mission by chiefs. Notably, Rev. Samuel Sehoza and Rev. Petro Limo – who were both child dependants (probably slaves) gifted to the mission by a chief (Semnkai) in the early stages of conversion – became some of the leading agents of UMCA's history in Magila.