| WORLD REPORT

 

In West-Central Africa major challenges remain 

 

 

George Egwakhe is fighting the poverty mind-set.

 

The son of farmers in rural Nigeria, Egwakhe now encourages Seventh-day Adventist Church leaders in West-Central Africa to abandon the phrase “I’m poor.”

 

“I disagree with that mentality; I don’t accept it,” said Egwakhe, an associate treasurer at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in the United States.

 

SELF-RELIANCE STRESSED: George Egwakhe, an associate treasurer for the Adventist world church, addresses church leaders in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, Monday, November 9, 2009. He and other church leaders are urging a more deliberate focus on local church regions becoming self-reliant. His comments came during an interview over lunch at the church’s West-Central Africa divisional headquarters, where church leaders held 2009 year-end business meetings.

Following the morning’s treasurer’s report, several delegates asked for an increase in appropriations for their regions. Both Egwakhe and the division president turned down that idea.

 

“Don’t tell me about poverty,” Egwakhe told some 30 delegates during an animated response to the floor discussion. “If you do not believe in self-support you are in the wrong place.”

 

Later, over lunch, Egwakhe said that most foreign church leaders wouldn’t be able to respond the way he did that morning. He grew up in the division and had to work as a farmer for five years following elementary school to earn his way to high school.

 

The West-Central Africa Division, or WAD, home to more than 830,000 Adventists, faces some of the most daunting challenges in the denomination, local church leaders say. In addition to being a malaria zone, it’s a volatile region, politically and economically. Currencies can fluctuate wildly—the region this year lost nearly 30 percent of its appropriation from the world headquarters because of varying currency rates. Also, transportation in the area is expensive—it can be cheaper to fly to Europe or the United States than to travel across the division’s territory.

 

KEYNOTE ADDRESS: West-Central Africa Division president Gilbert Wari delivers his keynote address at the 2009 year-end meeting in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, November 8, 2009.Still, the biggest challenge, Egwakhe said, is fighting against a mind-set that thinks money will always come from other world church regions.

 

Many in West-Central Africa are subsistence farmers who live on the equivalent of a few U.S. dollars a day. But, as Egwakhe pointed out to delegates, it was the rural eastern region of Nigeria that was the first area of that country to become self-reliant more than 30 years ago.

 

“They were farmers, and I see some of them here today,” Egwakhe told delegates. It’s not the amount of wealth that matters but how that wealth is managed, he said.

 

Early in 2009 the division held its first stewardship summit, which drew nearly 300 delegates to Ghana.

 

Similar conferences are scheduled around the division next year to emphasize responsible living and wealth management.

 

In his response to delegates, WAD president Gilbert Wari put his index finger to his temple, saying, “Development starts here, prepare your mind for development.”