‘Africa is amazing’, ‘Everyone should visit Africa once in their life’, ‘Africa is a mess’, ‘Life is very cheap in Africa’.

I’ve heard all these things, in fact I’ve probably said all of them. Each one, is to a varying degree, true. The world is also full of lazy stereotypes about Africa and Africans and yet these stereotypes also do not come from nowhere.

One Sunday after church I was chatting with three guys all from different parts of Africa (Nigeria, Rwanda & Kenya) and I mentioned I had just finished listening to a book. As soon as I mentioned the title, three big brilliant smiles broke out, fingers clicked, a couple of high fives happened and laughter erupted. They all knew, instinctively knew the truth of it, because they had all encountered the ignorance of so many about Africa. It is all those stereotypes and benign ignorance and more that Dipo Faloyin (from Nigeria) seeks to unravel, challenge, or flat out reject in his entertaining and personal book, Africa is not a country!

And it is an eye-opening account of both the way in which the colonial powers absolutely cheated, robbed, raped, pillaged, enslaved and killed their way through a whole continent leaving it divided and devastated. This legacy of utter destruction goes a long way to explain much of Africa’s current problems and why in so many areas Africa lags so far behind every other region of the world. For nowhere else was so much evil wrought on so many and so recently by foreign powers who literally got away with murder.

Faloyin goes to great lengths to show an Africa that is not defined by famines (Ethiopia), charity appeals (Band Aid), deadly epidemics (Ebola) and blood thirsty dictators in red berets (Uganda). In place of these badly overused tropes and the repeated use of the awful ‘Do they know it’s Christmas time?’ (to which the answer is, ‘of course they do, it’s the most Christian place in the world’), Faloyin seeks to paint a picture of the vibrancy, creativity, agency and energy that pulses the streets of African cities. This energy is often to the backdrop of loudspeakers that will make your ears bleed if you get too close. This is good and necessary and Faloyin is right.

In Africa he insists, there are a billion reasons for hope. This explains in part why, when recently talking to an educated young woman from Kinshasa who works for the Swedish tax authority (Skatteverket) she thinks she could make more money in Congo than in Sweden. For her, having got her education in Europe, there is a greater wealth of opportunity not in Europe but in Africa. She might well be right.

And at numerous points the author tried to convince the listener (reader) that even democracy in Africa is doing far better than most of us realise.

But, hang on a minute.

Democracy in Africa (and in plenty of other places too) is clearly in a very fragile state. In fact the last few years have been coup central in a massive belt of land that stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The number of vibrant democracies can be counted on one hand not two.

And Africa does still struggle with corruption from the street to the highest levels of government. And Africa is still extremely poor, and Africa is being hit hard by climate change that exacerbates war in Sudan, hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, jihadists in the Sahel, dictators in Egypt, violence in Ethiopia and a dozen other countries. And for all those reasons and more there will be many more people leaving Africa seeking a better life elsewhere than ever before. As Harvey Kwiyani says,

The migration of young Africans from the continent is inevitable. Many will risk their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea on a dinghy to get to Europe, believing it is better to die attempting to cross the seas than to struggle at home. Of course, for many, anywhere is better than home.

Your Sons and Daughters Shall Migrate

Anywhere is better than home. This is the heart of the African conundrum. Beautiful. Broken. A blessing to the world but one that no one really wants.

The truth is the rest of the world is ageing and ageing fast. It is also true that there is only one youthful region and that is Africa. From an economic and demographic perspective the whole world is going to need African blood, sweat & tears to keep their economies going, build their houses, clean their offices, care for their elderly, and run their businesses. We’re going to need them and they want to come.

The political problem is managing this, because the sheer numbers and the scale and rate at which they might come, if they could, far outweighs the host countries ability to cope (socially, if not economically).

Harvey though is responding to this article in the New York Times (making a similar argument to the one I made here) and he is thinking not of economies or cultures but of mission. There is the real possibility (as I raised here) that the future of Christianity in Europe, North America and many other regions could depend on the people arriving on our shores from Africa. Swept up in these waves of migration will be missionaries, evangelists, leaders.

There are two ways this could go. One possibility is that Europe will secularize the African young. In this reading as they get wealthier they will inevitably leave behind the faith of Africa. One Nigerian friend observed of his compatriots that when a government in Europe gives them 99% of what they used to pray for in Nigeria, then they no longer need God. Faith is transactional, and as they prosper they no longer need to deals with God.

The other end of the spectrum is that Africa (re) Christianizes Europe. The energetic, passionate, bold, miracle believing, hardship enduring faithful will eventually figure out how to connect, reach & save the godless continent and a new church emerges phoenix like from the ashes and ruins of what we see around us. It will be a delightful mix of black Bishops in new provinces, Pentecostals with their wonderfully weird church names and overly loud preachers rousing the faithful to new levels of faith. Or perhaps it will be something else that we cannot yet imagine.

In light of that Harvey asks some good questions,

What kind of support will the African church need to prepare their young people for mission as they migrate? What resources will be needed? And how can those resources be located and made accessible to them in Africa? And, finally, what missiologies do we need to equip and empower these young Africans for mission in other continents?

I don’t know if anyone yet knows the answers or even should have them. Every time I visit our Congolese congregation I leave convinced that they will never reach a single European. Aside from the linguistic barriers, there is so much that is so different. But then again maybe it’s OK that they never will. But maybe the next generation will.

I live with this African conundrum all the time. There is a group of people that will message me at any hour of the day or night, with a ‘How are you Pastor?’ and I know immediately that what they want is money and they absolutely are not interested in how I am. I won’t hear from them again until they need more money or have got themselves into another mess with the bureaucracy. Every single one of them is from Africa. The poor will always will be with you but my goodness it gets wearing.

But this week I prayed with men from Congo, Somalia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. I work with a woman from South Africa. On Sundays I am welcomed to church with a hug by people from Eritrea, Kenya, Uganda, and our percussion comes from Rwanda and Liberia. One of my closest pastor friends in Stockholm is from Egypt. The heart of our church already pumps with African blood. And I love it.

I suspect this tension and many others like it will test the Western church in all sorts of ways but I also suspect that this is entirely within the plan of our Sovereign Lord and it is intended for our good. We should embrace the challenges and resist all temptations to turn away from them.