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Bishops focus on poverty alleviation at historic meeting

Twelve African Bishops participated in the Roundtable along with Bishop Felton E. May, Chair of the Holistic Strategy Committee of the Council of Bishops

(right)Bishop Kainda Katembo of the South Congo Area and others took time out to talk with students about studying at AU.

The African Bishops of the United Methodist Church ended their first continental meeting with a renewed resolve to act strategically on the issue of poverty alleviation in Africa. The three-day African Bishops Roundtable, (10-13 September), brought together twelve Bishops of the United Methodist Church, both active and retired, at the Africa University campus in Mutare, Zimbabwe. The Bishops, representing congregations from west, east, central and southern Africa, made the discussion of poverty alleviation plans and strategies the primary focus of their time together.

The roundtable was the first gathering of its kind for the African UMC Bishops. It grew out of their expressed
need for opportunities to gather together periodically to share experiences, reflect on the challenges and joys of their various ministries and plan together their approaches to a myriad of issues confronting church and society in
Africa.
In response, Africa University proposed the roundtable event, which was implemented with the support of the
Council of Bishops and the General Council on Finance & Administration, (GCFA), and financed through the Episcopal Fund of the United Methodist Church. “As we go through our struggles, God is sharpening our tools so that we can be instruments of change,” said Bishop Daniel Wandabula, Resident Bishop for East Africa and one of two very recently elected Episcopal leaders in Africa. “Sharing and listening to my fellow Bishops, I believe that the Kingdom can come. We cannot separate the spiritual and the physical…to be the church; we should not shy away from the problems we face.”

Through facilitated discussions, the Bishops explored how issues of health, food security, governance and
education intersect with poverty to negatively impact the quality of life enjoyed by people in their congregations and communities. They noted that a poor quality of life leads many people to migrate to Europe, North America nd elsewhere, to the detriment of Africa’s development efforts. “(People) aren’t able to live in their own communities and localities and so they move away to other countries inan effort to find a better place and life,” said Bishop Kefas Kane Mavula of the Nigeria Area. “We have to convince people that moving away is not the solution…we have to make sacrifices, remain in our situations and try as much as possible to do what we can to improve those situations.”
One outcome of the roundtable is a commitment by the Bishops to increase their utilisation of Africa University as a partner in the fight against poverty. They are all using the University to train professionals but they are finding it
difficult to train the numbers of young people that are needed because of limited financial resources. For the Bishops, education—which increases available skills, nurtures responsible leadership and assists in changing the mindset
of the people—is seen as crucial. “We have everything to be rich in this continent,” said Bishop Kainda Katembo, Resident Bishop of the South Congo Area. “Where we are poor is in our minds and way of thinking. We want an education that will set free our minds and change our mentality so that we realize that we have resources and there is much we can do together, here on the continent.”

As a start, in Angola, Mozambique, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the resident bishops are spearheading local efforts to increase access to professional training. They are founding new, church-related tertiary level
institutions and upgrading existing ones to offer training in the fields of health, information technology and agriculture,
among others. In all of these efforts, Africa University’s current and future contributions are viewed as critical. Increasingly, the University is being seen as a primary source of the educators, managers and administrators to implement training programmes and nurture these new, country-specific development projects. In light of this, the Bishops are taking an even more active role in finding the resources for scholarships for students coming to Africa University from their countries
and conferences. They have agreed to take a proposal for scholarship support for the University to the November
meeting of the Council of Bishops. The proposal, dubbed “Hope for African Students”, seeks support to enroll four students a year at Africa University from each Episcopal area in Africa.

In summing up their resolve coming out of the meeting, Bishop Gaspar Domingos of West Angola Area said: “Let us not wait for heroes, let us be the heroes. Let us not wait for disciples, let us be the disciples and let us transform our reality.” With support from the Council of Bishops, the Bishops also hope to make the African Bishops
Roundtable an annual gathering on the Africa University campus in order to experience first-hand, the life and
work of the institution.