Africa: Anglican Church Announces Plans to Combat Poverty, Climate Change

2 February 2006
allAfrica.com
By John Allen

Cape Town — International representatives of the Anglican Church meeting in South Africa today launched a global initiative to bring church members around the world together to fight poverty and the effects of climate change.

Bishop Trevor Mwamba of Botswana told a news conference that the church needed to re-discover its mission to deal with "the life and death issues facing those who have no means...It's a question of focusing on things that really matter."

Bishop Mwamba is a member of a steering committee of a major international Anglican conference which will be held in South Africa next year. The committee hopes to re-focus the energies of the world-wide Anglican Communion on issues which affect the daily lives of its members. At present, the communion is torn by divisive debates over sexuality.

The initiative was announced by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, who has been made responsible by international leaders of the church for co-ordinating its work on issues of poverty, debt, trade and HIV/Aids.

Archbishop Ndungane said there was a groundswell of support across the Anglican world for re-focusing the church's mission. "It's not just evil, it is sinful that 120 million children of school-going age, most of them girls, cannot go to school, this in a world where there are surpluses."

He said it was a scandal that in a world where globalisation is making some people wealthy, 800 million people go hungry. "And we have been told that what we are seeing in terms of HIV and Aids is miniscule compared to the devastation that climate change is going to bring."

Development aid for Africa was "fine as far as it goes," he said, but fair trade was far more important. A one percent increase in African exports could generate US$70 billion, five times the amount of aid Africa received from external donors.

Next year's conference is expected to include delegations from 38 Anglican churches from all continents. Archbishop Ndungane said it was hoped that the head of the communion, Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, would join the meeting.

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