Understanding African Problems from the Roots to the Fruits

by Chris Ampadu

Africa, the pleasant continent of promise, has been perceived as a dark and cursed continent. But is Africa cursed? Most of the world is acquainted with only the bad news of Africa: wars, sicknesses, pain, poverty, hunger, famine, and deprivation. On the continent, many have given up hope. With the massive assistance and support that Africa has received, coupled with the enormous natural resources at her disposal, why has the continent not emerged from her predicaments? Though external factors such as colonialism, the slave trade, and global trade balances have taken their toll on Africa, the biggest obstacle to the continent’s development and progress is internal.

EditorOctober 14, 2018Africa, worldview, development, poverty, transformation, disease, social reform, religion Comment

Discipleship and Development

by Bob Moffitt

A paradigm is the filter through which we see reality. It is shaped by our beliefs and experiences. Our paradigms can blind us from recognizing what is real. Evangelical Christians have been blinded by a paradigm that focuses on making “converts” and overlooks Jesus’ emphasis on making disciples. The biblical understanding of making disciples is a continuous process that often but not always begins with conversion and leads to obeying/submitting to Jesus and therefore reflecting or looking like Him.

Healing/transformation that begins at the personal level and eventually leads to community and national levels is relatively straightforward. How? God transforms on the condition of the obedience of his people. When his people obey he heals. This is another reason for the priority of discipleship.

EditorOctober 13, 2018worldview, Bible, transformation, social reform, church Comment

Cultural Metaphors and Development

by Jim Harries

The contemporary approach to development defines Africa’s needs almost entirely in terms of money and Westernization. What Africa needs, donors assume, is to be more like the West. The means used to attempt to reach this goal are outside money and Western-style education in Western languages (usually English).

This article questions these presuppositions. But if outside donor money is not the answer for development in Africa, where should we look for the answer? This article presents research showing that human thinking is rooted in metaphors that are themselves rooted (or embodied) in actual experiences. This, then, opens doors of understanding ways in which Christian / biblical teaching is central to the initiation and propagation of sustainable, transformative, and indigenously rooted socio-economic development.

Worldview

The WCIU InternationalDevelopment Journal

The WCIU International
Development Journal