January 8, 2007

In 2007, the Washington Office (WOA) on Africa will highlight the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the number of people suffering from hunger and focus on the issue of food security -- a vital issue on a continent where one in three people are malnourished.

Besides food security, WOA will seek to influence the 110 th U.S. Congress on issues HIV/AIDS funding and safe and affordable water for the people of Africa.

WOA is an ecumenical ministry with board members representing Church World Service, the Church of the Brethren, Disciples of Christ/United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Maryknoll Office on Global Concerns, Mennonite Central Committee, Missionaries of Africa, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America, the Society of African Missions, United Methodist Church, and the U.S. Jesuit Conference.

WOA was founded in 1972 to support the movement for freedom from white-minority rule in southern Africa. Today, it has an expanded mission which seeks to address issues affecting grassroots African interests throughout the continent.

Mhizha Chifamba has served as WOA's Executive Director for just over a year. A native of Zimbabwe, Mr. Chifamba brings his knowledge and experience of both Africa and the United States to the challenge of articulating the perspectives of Africa's church leaders and grassroots communities to U.S. church groups and policy makers in the Congress and Administration.

"Among the tools I have brought from Zimbabwe, my country," Chifamba notes, "is a life living, working and studying with people mired in the deepest forms of poverty. It is difficult to describe the human cost of such suffering, but in the trajectory of my life I have met people whose families have been devastated, even destroyed, by the enormity of the destitution that engulfs them."

He goes on to say that "in Africa it is not the unfortunate few who suffer thus, but the overwhelming majority -- short-changed and unheard by a global system that values power instead of people, wealth instead of justice, and weapons of war over the ploughshares of peace.

We all share this rich Earth, but to a great extent, Africans and Americans live in different worlds, separate and unequal, rich and poor ... As a citizen of both worlds I have seen the cruelty of the global divide, but also the power of those on both sides who are building bridges of faith and solidarity over the chasm."

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