All African Conference of Churches (AACC) organised their 11th General Assembly on the 1-7 July at Kigali, Rwanda. The conference attracted more than 800 participants across the African continent, including international partner organisations.
This year AACC General Assembly showed the importance and the need to invest in ethical education for the church based organizations leaders and to achieve self-sustainability of the institution while remaining faithful their values in a world of constant change. The Globethics.net strategy on ethics in higher education was thematically relevant to conference; this is why Globethics.net featured as a key guest at the AACC 11th General Assembly, participating in three presentations conducted by Globethics.net Executive Director, Obiora Ike.
In the week prior to the General Assembly over 100 young theologians came to reflect on the theme and sub-themes in preparation for the 11th General Assembly. Globethics.net was invited along with other partners such as Bread for the World, Act Alliance and World Council of Churches to deliver lectures to the theological students. At the General Assembly, Globethics.net also played an active role.
At the plenary session, Obiora remarked the importance of strengthening the ethical investments of Church based organizations and how it is linked to education. He showcased Globethics.net, AACC and Bread for the World Project, African Church Management (ACAP), as an example of working with these institutions and offering them capacity development to improve their institution's assets management. Taking the opportunity of that all the organisation involve in this project were present in the room, Obiora launched the ‘African Church Assets Handbook'. It is a Globethics.net Publication which offers conceptual knowledge, practical solutions and case studies written by practitioners for practitioners in churches on how to manage ethically the institutions assets. To finalise his presentation, Obiora announced that after having successfully overseeing two runnings of ACAP (ACAP I and ACAP II), there was a going to be a third version, ACAP III, and invited to the present theological institutions to join it.
One of Obiora's lectures to the theological students focused on corruption and the role churches and the role of the churches in Africa to fight corruption. ‘The solution to stop from being a constant beggar to become self-reliance or even a donor is to educate church based organisation's leaders on how to manage the resources ethically and how to invest in ethics and values' - this was one of the concepts shared by Obiora on his second speech where he addressed the question: how institutions can move from move from dependence to interdependence?
