Around the Region

May 2005

EDICISA joins the rest of the continent in celebrating Africa Day, which saw the birth of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on 25 May 1963. The formation of the OAU was in pursuit of promoting unity and solidarity among African countries.

The OAU, which has been renamed African Union (AU), was formed by African Heads of States such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and other 32 African leaders most of them whose countries had become independent. It had become prudent that the colonized African countries would not be independent if they had not developed into a unified force in fighting the colonialists who had continued to exploit the African resources for the betterment of their economies back home.

As we commemorate the birth of Africa, the continent is embroiled in political disputes that are still threatening to derail the progress that had been made since the dawn of independence. A glimpse at the conflicts in Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo and until recently, Angola paints a gloom picture on the future of the continent. These conflicts have in a way involved every African country.
The resultant force has been that substantial amount of resources have been channeled to wards resolving conflicts at the expense of developmental projects.

Besides these conflicts, Africa is facing a host of problems such as the devastating HIV and AIDS, abject poverty, droughts and famine, civil unrest, unemployment, violence, religious conflicts, dictatorship, bullying from developed nations, disease and hunger among other horrendous difficulties.

As an Ecumenical movement, we believe that God gave His people the power to build and not to destroy. We appeal to all Africans irrespective of race, gender, religion, political affiliation and social or economic status to follow the example of the African Fathers who had a vision of a peaceful, developed and equal continent that would become the pride of the world. To put it in the words of the late great African leader, Kwame Nkrumah, ‘we should look neither east nor west but forward. `