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Malawi

Parenting in the Digital Age

By Farming, Malawi, Training

New APF trustee Kingston Ogango will be leading ‘Parenting in the Digital Age’, an innovative and important workshop at Canterbury Baptist Church on Saturday 4th November. It is aimed at parents, carers, aunts, uncles, grandparents – in fact anyone with a concern for children, especially with regard to their exposure to the internet.

Parenting in the Digital Age
Hosted by APF and facilitated by Kingston Ogango, Africa Regional Director, Alpha International and recently appointed APF trustee.
This half day conference addresses issues around family dynamics, parenting tactics and how to remain relevant to digital natives.
Saturday 4th November, 9.30 to 14.00 at Canterbury Baptist Church, CT1 1UT
For more information or to book your place, contact:
WhatsApp +256 707 908298

Topics covered include ‘What Must Parents do to Remain Relevant?’ and ‘Parenting Digital Natives’.

If the workshop is of interest but you are in another part of the country, please also make contact to book Kingston when he is next in the UK.

October 2, 2023
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Helping Farmers in Malawi through Environmental Crises

By Farming, Malawi, Training

Rev Lloyd Chizenga leads New Life Christian Church and has been an APF partner for nearly 40 years. With funding from Operation Agri and support from APF, he teaches conservation agriculture with a gospel message in villages across southern Malawi. Here’s Lloyd’s latest update.

I am Pastor Lloyd Chizenga, General Director of New Life Christian Church, a network of about two hundred churches across southern and central Malawi. We also have some congregations in Mozambique. With my small team from Blantyre, we continue to use New Life’s strong reputation in rural communities to provide training on conservation agriculture to village groups.

The last few years have been very tough in Malawi. Erratic weather conditions driven by climate change are becoming a problem all over the world, but especially here in Malawi we are seeing huge impacts. In 2022, Tropical Storm Ana destroyed many crops, left thousands homeless and damaged infrastructure. Then early this year, Cyclone Freddy hit. This affected the Shire Valley area very badly as flooding and landslides washed away many homes. Six months’ worth of rain fall fell in just six days, ripping up roads and drowning farms. The government estimated that over one thousand people lost their lives in southern Malawi during the storm.

When you look at the annual statistics, you might see normal amounts of rain for the year and think everything is fine, but this is not the case at all. The rain used to be predictable and reliable. Now we are finding that we get all of it in torrential storms and then nothing in longer and hotter dry periods. We blame climate change for these shifts which have contributed to a serious decline in food availability.

This year’s maize harvest saw a fifty percent decline in some areas and a corresponding price spike. Prices in Nsanje, in the far south of the country, for example, shot up 400 percent during March. This might sound profitable for a farmer looking to sell surplus crops, but most smallholders cannot do this. They rely on high interest loans to buy food for their families until they harvest, but without crops to sell and with debts to pay, life becomes very precarious.

Changing weather patterns are just one of the reasons we continue to work so hard on our conservation agriculture training programme. Soil degradation is another challenge. Where fields are not protected with a good mulch cover, heavier rainfall and longer, hotter dry periods mean that soils are being washed or blown away. The Shire River basin is a hotspot for this problem. While soil erosion is a challenge for an individual farmer, it is causing knock on problems across the entire country. Nearly all our power is generated from hydroelectric power stations on the Shire River and Lake Malawi but the sediment running off the fields is reducing their capacity and means power cuts.

These are just some of the reasons that the training programme we provide in villages is even more important now than when we started in 2016. This year, with further funding from Operation Agri and support from African Pastors Fellowship, we are working with a new cohort of villages in Nsanje, Chikwawa, Blantyre Rural, Ntcheu, Balaka, Mangochi and Machinga Districts.

The training we give has adapted with our experience and the changing pressures on farmers. We still focus on good soil management, such as creating planting stations rather than following the traditional practice of earthing-up which damages soil structure, and mulching. As the price of fertiliser has doubled, knowledge about making thermal compost is a lifeline.

Now, however, we also promote ‘climate smart’ agriculture by teaching about trees like the acacia tree Faidherbia albida which add fertility to the soil and protect crops. We include more about managing farm finances, helping farmers to think carefully about borrowing, saving and marketing surplus crops. We also think it is important to create opportunities for communities to come together and discuss the traumas they have faced over the last few years and begin to heal.
One of the most exciting aspects of the training is that we now include teaching about animal care. This is because farmers who follow the training make a profit which they invest. Livestock provide an excellent income stream as not only can the young be sold but they also produce manure for compost. One important aspect of our training is linking our faith and farming practices to our responsibility to care for creation. It is so important that Christian farmers know that caring for the land God has given them is central to their faith.

Over the past seven years, the Growing Greener project has seen so many changes in the lives of people and communities involved. As soil fertility and yields have grown, lives in the villages have changed.

We see food security, livestock purchased, school fees paid, and homes roofed with iron sheets. We are especially grateful for the additional support we received to help farmers in the Lower Shire Valley buy seed to replace the crops lost to flooding after Cyclone Freddy.

Thank you for all your support.

Lloyd

September 28, 2023
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Raising Christian Leaders in Malawi

By Malawi, Training

Central Bible College of Malawi (CBCM) was founded in 2007 by Pastor Goodwill Logeya while he was studying for a Diploma in Biblical Theology. He was motivated to provide training to the thousands of rural pastors in Malawi who had not been able to access training as he had, due to training centres being so few and fees so unaffordable. Pastor Goodwill writes:

I experienced a difficult life in college. I was expelled from class, thrown out of dorms, chased out of the kitchen and denied access to an exam. All because I missed school fee deadlines. At one point, I found employment at the school as a computer administrator and my wage was credited to my school fee account. This, in addition to buying and selling various goods at school and typing projects for my fellow students, just about kept me going.

Once I was stranded in town after being chased out from Bible school owing school fees. I went to some leaders of a Pentecostal church to ask for help but they refused. Then I went to Capital City Baptist Church in Lilongwe and explained my ordeal. The pastor gave me a cheque of 10,000 kwacha (about £8). A concerned Muslim also gave me K10,000 which meant I could return to study.
Eventually, I completed the diploma and was able to study for a master’s degree in theology at the University of Malawi. During this time, I joined forces with leaders from Baptist, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Adventist and other denominations to offer basic training in the Bible and in ministry to rural church leaders. We would hire a venue and invite the pastors to come and stay with us in cities like Blantyre. We used our own money to pay for the training.

Finding this approach cost too much, we decided to move from the city to rural areas, basing our work in Chikwawa and bringing the training to the people. Chikwawa is a rural district in southern Malawi and its accessible location meant it was easier for us to meet with Christian leaders from village churches in both Malawi and Mozambique.
This is how Central Bible College started, offering affordable training to rural church leaders from Malawi and Mozambique. Things were going really well with a growing number of pastors graduating. Then, in 2020 we were interrupted by Covid and Cyclone Anna. In 2022, Cyclone Gombe hit. Then, in February this year, Cyclone Freddy came. The storm swept through the whole building leaving us completely stranded. We agreed that we could no longer continue in Chikwawa because the area is so vulnerable to flooding. So recently we reestablished our training programme in Blantyre.

We have tailored the curriculum to the needs of the local church, responding to the trends in society and with a practical emphasis on mission. More precisely, the formational and ministerial training we provide combines with mission and evangelism outreach during weekends where students demonstrate and practice what they learn.
The curriculum is rich in content, enough to impact the head with knowledge, touch the heart with passion and give ministerial skills to the hands. Towards the end of their studies, each student presents a research topic which they put into action in their church after graduation.

As we continue to provide affordable training that really helps untrained rural pastors, we have learnt that there is huge spiritual hunger in Malawi. There are many unreached areas especially in remote village communities, but churches are clustered in towns. We must take a risk and equip leaders for ministry in rural areas.

Then, we know that untrained Christian leaders are spreading errant messages. Sadly, Bible verses can be used to damage and hurt if they are not well understood.

We have also found that churches in Malawi struggle to work outside of their denominations. For example, it is hard to go to a Presbyterian church with an advert while you worship in a Baptist church. We work hard to break down these divisions.

There is a very big misconception among many people. When you give personal funds to support ministry, some assume that you are sponsored by Western donors. This misconception has led to many Christian leaders envying each other for no reason. Funding is desperately needed for ministry but without openness and transparency, relationships can be damaged.

From everyone at CBCM, thank you!

September 28, 2023
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Deepening Bonds Down South

By Environment, eVitabu, Farming, Malawi, Zambia

While the UK roasted at 40°C, our Projects Coordinator escaped Britain’s summer heatwave by traveling to cool southern Africa. Geoff Holder reports on a busy but productive three weeks catching up with APF partners in Malawi and Zambia.

Extreme weather driven by climate change is causing shocks all over the world. As new temperature records were smashed back home, I visited communities supported by Pastor Lloyd Chizenga (pictured above) and Hunta Faeti from New Life Christian Church (NLCC) in Malawi’s Shire River valley.

Earlier in the year, the area was devastated by two huge tropical storms. Flooding washed away crops, homes and livestock. Your gifts helped APF provide replacement seed and training delivered by Lloyd and Hunta which was now ripening into a lifesaving harvest.

Outside of the flood-affected area, we heard how the training given by the church was having a huge impact. Global energy prices have made fertiliser unaffordable. I was told, “Pastor Lloyd is a prophet! He saved us with the message of composting now we can’t buy fertiliser anymore”.

In Liwonde, I met with Pastor Patrick Stephen Mateketa. He runs village discipleship training workshops in rural churches using our library resource app eVitabu as a reference tool. He found APF online and downloaded eVitabu on his phone. “It is good having a library there in my hand when I am teaching untrained pastors in the village” he explained.

Back in Blantyre, I ran workshops for NLCC pastors and leaders helping them also get onto eVitabu. Pastor Sousa travelled all the way from Mozambique to attend.

In Zambia, I joined Pastor Lawson Limao (pictured below) in Shibuyij, a village several hours’ drive outside Lusaka, to see him teach in a tiny mud and straw church using resources on eVitabu. The training was fantastic! He’d gathered leaders from local churches and the community to learn about agroforestry and faith, meeting the community’s physical and spiritual needs. It was inspiring to see the power of eVitabu in the dedicated hands of a brilliant young leader. In Lusaka, Lawson and I were interviewed about eVitabu on a Zambian Christian radio station with an audience from across the country.

Finally, in Luanshya, a town in Copperbelt Region, Revd Charles Mwape and I ran a workshop helping Baptist pastors use eVitabu. It was especially useful seeing how the pastors used their phones in different and sometimes unexpected ways, lessons that will help us improve the app and make it easier for African users in the future.

September 27, 2022
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Village discipleship in Malawi

By eVitabu, Malawi

The church in Africa is growing faster than anywhere else but training leaders for the new churches isn’t keeping up. The vast majority of rural church leaders have never had even a single day of formal training. In Malawi, Patrick  Steven Mateketa is finding eVitabu to be an invaluable tool to support his vital training work with village church leadership teams.

My name is Patrick Steven Mateketa. I am a Malawian from the Central Region, District of Kasungu but I was born and have lived most of my life in the southern region. For ten years now, I am living in Balaka District.

I joined African Pastors Fellowship in the year 2020 and was introduced to the eVitabu app. I am a pastor and teacher by calling. Teachers need to be very resourceful so that they can better communicate hidden meanings of the Word of God, so I wanted to see how eVitabu could help me.

By the time I was joining APF, I was running village discipleship training workshops with rural pastors and leaders not far from where I live. I had prepared three lessons from the books given to me by an American pastor from California which I translated into Chichewa. That was the beginning of my village discipleship ministry programme.

In our villages, most of church pastors and leaders are handpicked. They don’t have any training or even basic knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. You find a pastor leading a big congregation but lacking both theological understanding and the resources to guide them.

After six months of village discipleship training, the American funding ended. I was also concerned about a training focus that seemed to me to be about personal gain. Nevertheless, other pastors and leaders in villages also called me, asking for training. This made me realise exactly what office God set for me in my calling.

I now started searching for resources to use to train and coach village pastors in depth. Among them, I found the eVitabu app from APF which I use regularly. In eVitabu, there are resources touching almost every area of ministry. For example, when I am teaching on discipleship, I look for discipleship books. When I am teaching on pastoral formation, I look for resources focused on theology, the art of preaching, eschatology, and the like.

eVitabu is simple to use and very handy. Once, a pastor from the UK bought me a laptop but it was not safe to carry it on the bicycle I use to cycle very long distances. I ended up breaking it, soaked in the rain. With eVitabu, I have many powerful resources just there on my phone, but it is easy to carry and protect.

Sometimes, a learner asks me a question from a topic that I don’t have much knowledge about. When this happens, I ask them to let me finish the current teaching point and say I will come back to that question later. I can then get my phone, open eVitabu, search for that topic and I have this great support. This is only a problem when I am in areas where the network is weak.

Many of the resources on eVitabu are in English but I teach in our own languages. One of the things I do is to choose a portion of a relevant resource and translate it either while I am preparing or even while I am teaching. I would love to see more resources on eVitabu in Chichewa, Tumbuka and other languages spoken in Malawi.

Another thing that would be a great help is for supporters of APF to support my training by donating data bundles for my phone. Data bundles are a problem to most of us here.

In our monthly APF discussions on Zoom, I heard APF staff Dave and Geoff talk about a future development of doing formal Bible school training by extension learning through the eVitabu app. This idea must be promoted, encouraged and marketed with a catchy advertisement.

I like the eVitabu app because it does not only teach about the spiritual things but also covers agriculture, economics, the environment, our society and other people. Christian leaders are agents for change and positive change should be seen across all aspects of our lives.

In the village where I borrow a piece of land to grow my crops, people do not believe they can harvest good crops without first securing the farm with magic. But of all the village farms this year, my small field has better crops than any other fields. Villagers are now beginning to trust God in their farming.

God bless you!
Patrick Steven Mateketa

June 23, 2022
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A Tale of Two Villages

By Farming, Malawi

Southern Africa, especially Malawi and Mozambique, have suffered repeated destructive storms in recent years attributable to climate change. Revd Lloyd Chizenga from New Life Christian Church describes how the region’s most recent cyclone, Tropical Storm Ana, has impacted some of the communities he trains in sustainable farming skills.

Tropical Storm Ana started last January in Madagascar. It passed through Mozambique and came to end up in Malawi. The cyclone caused a lot of damage when it landed in Malawi. There were three days of very heavy rains, very strong winds and a lot of infrastructure was destroyed. Roads, schools, crops, animals and houses were swept away.

The government has reported that nearly 40 people have been killed in Malawi and something like 200,000 had to leave their homes due to flooding, especially in the southern areas of Chikwawa, Nsanje and the Lower Shire Valley.

In these places, many of the village communities where we have been running the Growing Greener sustainable agriculture training programme with support from Operation Agri and African Pastors Fellowship have really suffered.

One of those communities is Dwanya village on the East Bank of the Shire River in Chikwawa District. Here, all the crops that the project participants planted so carefully with manure, compost and mulch were washed away by heavy floods that came with the storm. As the water overwhelmed the village, family heads carried children and vulnerable people to safety. Families sought refuge in trees and the wind and water rushed across the fields, through their simple homes and stripped away their crops.

While the community in Dwanya are now in desperate need for food aid, basic household utensils and seeds to replant in March, villages in our training programme located in some other districts escaped the worst effects of Storm Ana and are doing very well. Ulongwe village in Balaka District further up the River Shire is one such community.

Here the situation is totally different. The fields are doing well with good, green and tall maize. With this strong yield, the community will be able to store more of their crop surplus to sell later in the year when food prices are higher. This will help pay school fees for their children. It will mean they can invest in animals such as breeding goats to diversify their household income. It will enable them to give more in tithes to support their church and their pastor.

As a leader in the New Life Christian Church network here in Malawi and the main coordinator of the Growing Greener agriculture training programme, it is so hard for me to see so many of our projects so suddenly and so badly affected. My heart goes out to the people in Dwanya and the other villages that are suffering. But I get strength seeing that our work has not been for nothing. We give thanks that Ulongwe and other places away from the path of the storm are doing so well.

Please continue to stand with us in prayer and thank you for all your support of this important agriculture training work with vulnerable communities in southern Malawi.

April 1, 2022
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Twenty Years of Partnership in Malawi

By eVitabu, Farming, Malawi, Training

2021 is APF’s 40th Anniversary year! In celebration, some of our longest standing partners have shared memories of partnering with APF. This time, Revd Lloyd Chizenga describes some of the ways APF has supported the ministry of New Life Christian Church in Malawi for more than two decades.

I joined the Fellowship in 2000 when Revd Ralph Hanger was APF Director. Since then, APF has been instrumental in my life and family and the ministry of New Life Christian Church here in southern Malawi. APF to us is family so we are celebrating 40 years with you.

Over the years, APF has been a true partner in the gospel of Jesus Christ. When our house was attacked by robbers in the night, APF helped us relocate to a safer part of Blantyre and build a new home.

When our church network was very young and had no trained leaders, APF helped new pastors get vital basic training. Each person got a certificate of attendance.

APF provided goats to poor church leader families. When a goat gave birth to twins, one young goat was given to another family as a way out of household poverty.

Income generation projects have been an important part of APF’s support here in Malawi. Working with pastors’ wives to set up micro-businesses has made a huge difference. Many children were able to go to secondary school and pay school fees because of the profits pastors’ wives made from these small enterprises.

More recently, APF has equipped our leadership team with eVitabu. eVitabu is like a library that grows and grows. I was one of the first pastors to use eVitabu.

I travelled to Uganda in 2018 and was given a tablet to use eVitabu on. There are so many resources on eVitabu that are good for pastors here in Malawi to read.

Covid-19 continues to be a huge challenge here. Many businesses are bankrupt and hospitals are struggling. In Blantyre, city health authorities have launched emergency activities to deal with a big increase in the number of patients. At Christmas, workers returning from South Africa brought that new Covid-19 variant with them which is more easily caught. Malawi is not likely to get any vaccines soon, but we are grateful to APF for the grant which helped us buy washing buckets, soap, masks and sanitiser.

The most significant partnership between APF and New Life Christian Church however has been the Growing Greener project. We have been running this for about five years now and it is truly a life changer for poor farming households. We train communities in village churches on farming techniques like no-till soil management, composting, mulching, agroforestry and on-farm micro-business.

Rural communities are always suspicious of change. Even when a change is shown to make a positive difference, witchcraft is blamed. But because the Growing Greener project is led by us and comes through the local Malawi church, not from outsiders, people trust it, follow the teachings and it is working. So far, this project has reached many thousands of households.

All this would have been impossible without APF’s standing alongside us. By working in partnership with the local African church, APF taps into the resources already there in the church and in the community. It is this approach that is really make a difference.

So, to all our friends who support APF back in the UK, thank you!

Revd Lloyd Chizenga is ‘Bishop’ of New Life Christian Church (NLCC). NLCC is an independent network of churches based in Blantyre. The majority of NLCC congregations are in rural communities in Malawi and Mozambique.

Photo gallery

Lloyd with a pastor’s wife at an APF training event in the early 2000s.

Household income generation schemes
for pastors’ families supported by APF.

Milk, meat and young. Rural households
use goats as a way to save and invest.

Revd Paul Kylimpa (l) from Uganda and Lloyd (r) checking out some of the farming resources on eVitabu during the app’s launch event held in Kampala during 2018.

Geoff Holder speaking with farmers participating in Growing Greener, 2017.

March 29, 2021
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Forty Years a Trustee

By Malawi

Revd Dave Howard has served APF as a trustee since the outset. Here, he reflects with gratitude and looks forward with optimism.

“APF was born out of a vision which God gave Derek and Jill Blundell in 1981. In those days there were two sorts of Christian overseas agencies: overtly mission societies who went out to convert, and relief organisations that provided aid. The genius of APF’s vision was realising that supporting the indigenous church could be more effective in spreading the gospel. Amazingly, no-one was doing that!

“My own involvement in APF was by accident. I became vicar of the parish in which APF founders Derek and Jill were active members. My commitment to APF was cemented when I travelled to Malawi sometime later with their successors, Ralph (pictured above) and Jane Hanger. A pastor told us he had walked “40 miles” (meaning a very long way) to attend some training. Ralph noticed that he had not brought his Bible and the pastor explained that as there was only one Bible for his entire church congregation it was better to leave it behind for their use than to bring it with him. This struck me deeply. Resourcing marginalised but dedicated church leaders like this man remains a driving force for my involvement as a trustee.

APF has changed over the years but meeting the needs of the local church in Africa has always remained the focus. As the world has changed, some of those needs have changed, but APF has adapted to meet them. In the early days, APF sent books and sewing machines to pastors and their wives, provided training courses and, of course, the thing with which APF became synonymous: bicycles. APF was the first to see that such basic help could transform the lives and ministry of pastors.

“The aim remains the same – to equip pastors to be the best they can be in their ministries under God. Now that many pastors in Africa have access to the same mobile internet technology we enjoy in the West, APF is responding with exciting new projects like eVitabu, whilst continuing to provide basics like bikes, local language Bibles and solar power. It is sobering to think that when APF was founded, mobile phones were still several years away in the UK! APF members can be proud that once again, under God’s guiding and providing hand, we are pioneering ways of enabling African pastors to fulfil their Christian ministries.

“Please join with us in giving thanks to God that, 40 years on, APF is still fulfilling its God given vision. We are grateful to the various directors who, over the years, have brought their differing gifts to bear on the work; to supporters without whose generous donations and prayer support the work could not have flourished, and to our dedicated African partners who give so much of themselves to their ministries.

“And above all, we thank our gracious heavenly Father who has been faithful to this work even when times have been tough. We join with St Paul in his words of thanksgiving: ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ’.”

Please pray

Give thanks for APF’s extensive network of partners in Africa who often work with few resources and little access to training or materials.

Pray that as APF continues to serve these dedicated but marginalised leaders, we would help them fulfil God’s call upon their lives.

Pray for the current APF Board of Trustees: Revd Richard Suffern (Chair), John Chambers (Treasurer), Revd Dave Howard, Revd Andrew North, Andrew Richardson, Revd Richard Tucker and our newest trustee, Anne Lyttle.

December 22, 2020
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We will pick up where we left off…

By Farming, Malawi

One of APF’s projects that has been paused due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions on gatherings is the Growing Greener agriculture project run by New Life Christian Church in Malawi. Revd Lloyd Chizenga reports on how the church network was responding.

“What is happening in Malawi with Covid-19? As a church we are currently on a sensitisation tour, teaching the communities on how people can get the virus and how to avoid getting the virus. There is a lot of misinformation about, especially in the remote areas, and the government is being supported by NGOs [Non-Governmental Organisations] and churches like ours to keep people informed. We are busy bringing awareness messages to rural communities about Covid-19.

“Apparently, about 80 people have been found positive in Malawi. Twenty-four have recovered and three patients have died. The government tried to impose a national lockdown, but it did not work well because most of the people are poor. We live hand-to-mouth and there were no plans to help people financially so they could stay at home without starving. As you may be aware, around 85% of the population lives in the rural areas so they must continue farming, buying and selling food.

“Besides the impact of Covid-19 on our livelihoods, it has also affected us morally, physically and spiritually. We have a sense that some of our cultural tendencies have to be stopped. This includes having to follow social distancing guidelines and keeping at least a meter apart from others. We have been told we must avoid hand shaking and instead hand wash frequently with soap or sanitiser. There is also a ban on gatherings of more than 50 people. All these are new things in the Malawian setting. We are used to meeting in our hundreds even in rural communities. Our government has been less strict than many others in Africa but they are now saying we should wear a mask.

“In terms of the ‘Growing Greener’ sustainable agriculture project we have been running with support from APF and Operation Agri, Covid-19 has had an impact. Since we can only meet with 50 people and not more than that, we have had to pause meetings and training sessions with project beneficiaries. Our community groups normally have around 120 people in them so training must be reduced.

“We will pick up where we left off as soon as we are able. One thing we can do is to divide the community groups into more but smaller groups to follow the guidance. In the long term, Covid-19 has not affected the operations of the project so much, it has just slowed it down this year.

“One of the tasks I have been doing is to provide hand washing buckets, soap, sanitiser, and face masks to over 35 communities in the Chikwawa area. This is so important to stop Covid-19 spreading through our communities. We have been supported by APF donors in the UK to do this but we need more assistance so we can purchase more.”

Please pray

Giving thanks for the long-standing partnership APF has with Revd Lloyd Chizenga and his team

Giving thanks for Lloyd’s faith and optimism about picking up where we left off with Growing Greener

That some training has been able to continue albeit with reduced numbers

For any negative unintended consequences of social distancing on cultural habits to be minimal but that soap, water and facemasks being provided by Lloyd have maximum impact, maintaining public health and protection from coronavirus in Chikwawa region

July 4, 2020
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African Christianity and the Environment

By Environment, Malawi, Uganda

APF’s Project Coordinator, Geoff Holder, describes some of the finding of his research project which formed part of an MSc in Sustainable Development at SOAS, London. The university has suggested publishing the finding.

Most charities, mission agencies and international development organisations now recognise that it is essential to account for environmental factors when designing projects and initiatives in Africa. At APF, we’re led by our African partners, aiming to strengthen and support the good things they are already doing. But what do grassroots African Christians believe about the world around them? What value do they place on ecosystems? Could charities and mission organisations like ours achieve more by working in partnership with the African church when it comes to environmental resources?

African Christian theologians describe a unique and distinctive approach to creation. By combining Christian biblical theology and traditional African cultural understandings, African theologians like Lauenti Magesa see a spiritual connectedness within creation. Obaji Agbiji views the African community as a “bondedness with each other and with nature”. For B. Bujo, the foundation of African ecological ethics is the “cosmic community” which includes all beings.

Diane Stinton describes how many African Christians view life as functioning through “participation with God within a hierarchy of belonging”. Because God is the source of life, water and soils, everything is viewed as intrinsically sacred. Kalemba Mwambazambi goes further to see God manifest in trees, rivers, mountains and animals. He equates separation from nature with separation from God. “The forest is as important as the skin of a human which, if removed, results in death,” he writes.

While these writers provide a fascinating and perceptive insight into how African theologians conceptualise the world around them, I was interested in exploring how widespread this sort of environmental theology was outside of academia. What do ‘normal’ African Christians believe, and what might this mean for mission and development organisations like APF?

To find out, I sent African church leaders from across the continent a questionnaire and held group interviews with Christians from rural communities in Uganda and Malawi. Their responses were revealing.

Firstly, it was clear that environmental concerns feature highly in the lives of African Christians. But issues like deforestation, drought and extinction are understood primarily through the lens of their faith. The Bible, for example, guides opinions around burning environmental issues like population pressure.

Droughts and floods are seen as signs of God’s displeasure in human behaviour. Healthy soils and reliable rainfall on the other hand are blessings direct from God. Secondly, by undermining traditional cultural practices that used to help protect the environment, the growth of Christianity has been a cause of environmental degradation in Africa.

Mountains, forests, rivers and trees were once believed to be sacred, the home of spirits and ancestors. As the wild places were no longer feared, they were no longer protected. One pastor explained: “Our ancestors believed that because there was a spirit there, they would keep the trees. Because we Christians do not believe there is a spirit there, we cut down the trees.”

Despite this, Christian faith is the most powerful motivator of environmental action in Africa. African Christians frequently view themselves as stewards of God’s creation, tasked to care for what God has made. “God gave us a mandate,” one pastor told me. “He took us and put us in a garden. Now, we have left our responsibility to take care of the garden.”

This helps to explain why so many African Christians are interested in environmental action like tree planting. It also explains why you might read so much about environmental issues in Impetus. Creation care is simply very important to the African church and environmental concern a direct consequence of Christian faith in action.

So, from camels helping pastoralists adapt to climate change in Kenya, to solar power in Tanzania and Rwanda; from sustainable agriculture in Malawi to tree planting in Uganda, exciting opportunities exist for those, like APF, who work alongside the African church.

April 5, 2020
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