World Bank seeks partnership with churches in Africa
NAIROBI, Kenya, 8 March 2000 — “Religion is the most powerful philosophy in development,” a World Bank official told Newsroom at a conference focusing on poverty in Africa here this week.
Roger Sullivan, World Bank Sector Manager for Poverty Reduction and Social Development, said the bank is reviewing its policies and considering how to partner with churches to deliver services and improve economic development that will benefit the poor directly.
Sullivan is among the delegation of World Bank senior officials participating in an on-going joint conference between the bank and key church leaders here. The conference, named Poverty Alleviation in Africa, is the first of its kind, taking place on African soil and with one of the largest delegation of World Bank participants in the recent past. It has drawn together not only church leaders of different denominations in African but government ministers, heads of multinational companies, international and local NGOs (nongovernmental organization), civic leaders, and top women church leaders in the region. The participants are tackling the critical issue of poverty in an effort to find a solution toward its alleviation. Africa is the poorest continent in the world with more than 50 percent living below the poverty line of $1 per day.
Sullivan told Newsroom that the World Bank began to recognize in 1975 that the religious dimension was needed in development policies. It is the driving force behind the bank’s interest in developing partnerships with the church that led to this week’s conference.
Poverty was added to the World Bank agenda in the 1970s at the urging of Robert McNamara, who was then the president of World Bank, Sullivan said. McNamara was moved by data and information which revealed that 1 billion people in the world were living on less that $1 per day, a reality that upset him and pricked his conscience as a Christian to make a commitment to the poor of the world.
Sullivan, who has served the World Bank since the ‘70s, said policy developed from McNamara’s philosophy was reversed in the 1980s during the administration of Ronald Reagan, former United States president. The policy was scrapped in favor of the view that the “answer to poverty has to do with economic growth.” The players in the new concept were the market and the private sector. And within the new concept, Sullivan said, came the introduction of the infamous Structural Adjustment Programs in African countries, policies meant to bring political and social reforms that would better the situation but which many Africans believe have failed miserably in most African countries due to poor governance and incomplete delivery by governments, inevitably adding to the burden of poverty in the region.
“The church has not been a traditional partner of World Bank,” Sullivan said. The bank’s occasional assistance to church-based programs came on the periphery. The revamped interest in working with church and other religious groups is credited to the current World Bank President James Wolfensohn, a Jew, whose convictions are based on his religion, Sullivan said.
The World Bank recognizes that the church is a powerful ally in addressing poverty, due not only to its proximity to the poor in the grassroots communities where the majority are found but also to the fact that it has actively addressed all facets of human needs which include the spiritual.
In the discussions going on in Nairobi it has become very clear that World Bank officials have been frustrated by its previous partners, such as some governments. “We have interests in increasing partners; earlier partners have not been successful,” Sullivan said. “When we started we found out that one of the greatest institutions working with the poor was the church.”
The bank has no existing policies to work with the church, a situation that many conference delegates hope to change. One speaker early in the conference compared the discussions between the bank and the church to “a boy and a girl who are interested in beginning courtship but are coming from two different communities.” In the past these discussions have included critical questions touching ethics and morality, especially the World Bank’s past failures in dealing with governments and not addressing the eminent dangers posed by the inability of governments to deliver, eventually leading to the poverty crises among many evils eating into the continent.
Copyright © 2000 Newsroom.
Used with permission.