{"id":5130,"date":"2006-01-25T23:11:02","date_gmt":"2006-01-25T23:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/out-of-africa-1.html"},"modified":"2006-01-25T23:11:02","modified_gmt":"2006-01-25T23:11:02","slug":"out-of-africa-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/out-of-africa-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Out of Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

The spiritual scene in Nigeria – fervent, healing and prosperity-oriented religiosity, and, on ocassion, curious encounters between Christianity and Islam<\/a><\/p>\n

Can Rick Warren succeed in Rwanda? The writer of this piece in Christianity Today has his doubts.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Warren uses the ancient proverb, "Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime," to explain his development plan for Rwanda. He wants to help Rwanda "sell its fish." Warren says Rwanda can produce far more fruit than it can actually consume and that exporting Rwanda’s agricultural products could be part of the solution to the country’s economic troubles.<\/p>\n

While this would no doubt provide needed income for a poor country, I wonder if Warren has been able to sit with the leaders of the European Union and the United States to address the injustices of these countries’ current agricultural trade policies. Rwanda will not find receptive markets in the consumer powerhouses of the West. Currently, the U.S. and the E.U. provide more than $90 billion in annual subsidies to their domestic agricultural producers in order to protect them against competition from foreign exporters.<\/p>\n

These farm subsidies assault the idea of free trade, and the ramifications for countries like Rwanda are profound. Without genuine trade-policy reform, no one in the U.S. or the E.U. will be buying Rwandan produce anytime soon. It is not enough to teach a man to sell fish. The question of who controls the market must also be addressed.<\/p>\n

Warren’s relationship with Rwandan President Paul Kagame is also of concern. Kagame was the leader of the rebel Tutsi forces that brought an end to genocide in 1994. Yet as president, he has overseen a military that continues to occupy parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Human-rights observers such as Amnesty International and even the U.S. State Department accuse Kagame of not only stripping Congo of its natural resources, but also of mass rape, burning villages, and murdering civilians. Rwandan leaders reject these claims, yet the human-rights community maintains their accuracy.<\/p>\n

Years of African corruption in the wake of colonial puppetry have created rifts of distrust between those who are suffering and those with friends in high places. Although Kagame is an improvement from past leaders, his connection to former regimes and to ongoing human-rights concerns should trouble anyone seeking to work with him.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The spiritual scene in Nigeria – fervent, healing and prosperity-oriented religiosity, and, on ocassion, curious encounters between Christianity and Islam Can Rick Warren succeed in Rwanda? The writer of this piece in Christianity Today has his doubts. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}