Regional Relations

The Diakonia & Solidarity team's work
in the regions: AFRICA

BACKGROUND:

For work of Diakonia & Solidarity's Africa Desk, the most important questions now and in the next few years are:

How should the Christian gospel be understood and applied in everyday life? The church in Africa has grown dramatically for many years, but there is a difference between numerical growth and the quality of that growth.

How to harness the potential of the church to influence people's lives? In other words, how do we accompany and challenge churches to work with people? Many African churches believe it is a sin for them to be involved in politics, but in rural areas there is no other organization but the church.
The church in Africa sometimes promoted unjust systems and values and therefore needed to extricate itself from inappropriate inherited diaconal models. Close cooperation with the state and other "managers of society" could lead to co-option by "those who are eager to see the church's role confined to celebration of Holy Communion at the altar... turning a deaf ear to social evils around it."
(Commitment to Jubilee: The Seven-Year Review of the WCC Programme on Sharing and Service, 1998.)

What does "democracy" mean on a continent beset with border conflicts, ethnicism and the marginalization of women? How can Africa evolve democratic systems that realistically address its current problems? What can be done to help the continent plan its own future and set its own agenda? How can democracy help to create a "culture of peace and tolerance" in Africa?

In the African context, the WCC is challenged to advocate for those who, because they live in undemocratic societies, cannot advocate for themselves, and to work with non-church organizations which share the same commitment.

EXAMPLES OF OUR WORK IN AFRICA:

Not all girls in Africa have access to primary schooling, while in the area of theological education, the vast majority of pupils are men.

Women's leadership and capacity-building

Strengthening the skills of women holding executive positions in African churches and ecumenical organizations is a top priority for Diakonia & Solidarity's Africa Desk.

With the help of a field consultant, the Africa Desk conducted two workshops for church women in francophone and anglophone West Africa in 1997, and a third for women in East and Southern Africa in 1998.

The workshops looked at women's access to leadership positions in the African church context and at the needs, resources and strategies for leadership training for women. In particular, they reviewed

participants' skills, experience, positions held and leadership aspirations

opportunities to which women currently have access

their specific gender needs in the area of capacity-building

constraints to equitable access to capacity-building resources in NCCs and churches and

possible solutions that focus on gender-sensitive programming, especially as regards scholarships and training.

This year, Diakonia & Solidarity's Africa Desk will publish a women's capacity-building manual, based on the insights gained from the three workshops. It also plans to add at least two women to the team of ecumenical enablers available for peer training in the region.

Food crops - an essential element for community wellbeing in Africa and thus a focus of development efforts.

Joint NCCs / Africa secretaries of agencies meeting

Diakonia & Solidarity's Africa Desk has encouraged effective collaboration between churches, national councils of churches (NCCs) and ecumenical development agencies by enabling them to get together to identify obstacles to cooperation and the means of overcoming them.

An African NCCs consultation organized by the WCC in Harare in 1996 was the first-ever opportunity for general secretaries of most African NCCS to reflect together on how to make their organizations "more relevant, efficient and effective". It was followed by a meeting of Africa secretaries of agencies in Geneva in 1997 that discussed whether, if the performance of some NCCs has not met agency expectations, the agencies themselves might not bear some of the responsibility for that.

The reflections and discussion will continue at a planned 1999 JOINT meeting of NCC representatives and Africa secretaries of agencies whose expected outcomes are a draft memorandum of cooperation and the first draft of a database of agencies, NCCs and common areas of work in Africa.

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