MAP East and Southern Africa
Office Mission:
MAP East and Southern Africa enables key African Christian leaders and their institutions
to identify and confront critical issues of health and healing, and, together with them,
devise and disseminate strategies and tools to build the African Church as a healing
community.
Contact MAP
East and Southern Africa
- Trauma Healing and Reconciliation
- AIDS Intervention Through the Church
- Total Health Ministries
Three views are discernible as one looks at sub-Saharan Africa. The pessimistic view is that the region is poor, forgotten, underdeveloped and divided. The optimistic view is that the region is rich in natural resources, has great potential, is liberated and changing for the better. In reality, the people of sub-Saharan Africa, like all people, are human beings influenced by those who are busy working for development and healing and those who, consciously or unconsciously, are working for their downfall.
Certainly, the statistics tell a bleak story. The Human Development Index ranks Kenya 128th of 174 countries. Yet Kenya is seen as perhaps the most stable, least violent nation in the region. Violence is one major factor in the region's troubles, with ethnic and tribal conflicts making human development difficult for many. Disease is another. The AIDS epidemic alone has caused a decline in the area of human development. Tanzania has lost the equivalent of eight years of human development to AIDS. At the same time, health care services in the region lag behind in the face of economic systems that cannot sustain quality care. The number of destitute children on the street is growing. The cycle of poverty, malnutrition and disease affects thousands of new victims each week.
The reality of these situations confronts MAP's staff in East and Southern Africa every day. MAP has recognized that African nations need integrated programs for leadership, development and health care, all of which fall within the mandate of the church.
MAP East and Southern Africa supports the church as it responds to this mandate for healing in strategic interventions which meet the following criteria: addresses the needs of the whole person; empowers people at local community level; and adheres to underlying policies that correspond to biblical principals.
The joy, anxiety, hope, despair and pain of coming home is experienced by many refugees returning to Rwanda. Jean Marie is one of them. He says he feels like a stranger in his own country. His home has been occupied by another returnee. His wife and children are still away in a neighboring country. Like many others, he needs encouragement and support.
There is great need for healing and reconciliation for the Rwandan people. MAP International's East and Southern Africa office recognizes this great need. MAP is working with church leaders in Rwanda -- and also in Burundi, Zaire, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya -- to meet the total health needs of communities in the region. Workshops on trauma counseling, healing and rehabilitation are being conducted in Kigali to address the needs in the community. MAP has also distributed medical supplies to mission hospitals in the country.
AIDS Intervention Through the Church
Up to 70 percent of the 22.2 million people infected with the virus that causes AIDS live
in sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 350,000 children born with AIDS in one year, 86 percent were
in sub-Saharan Africa. And 5.1 million of the 6 million people who have died of AIDS have
been from the region. The fundamental solution to the problem of AIDS is promoting healthy
behaviors. Our AIDS initiative aims at curbing the spread of the AIDS virus in Africa
through increased participation of African churches in effective, culturally appropriate
and locally sustainable AIDS control programs in their communities. MAP East and Southern
Africa intends to equip local church communities in selected countries in Africa to
respond to the AIDS crisis with effective AIDS care and prevention programs.
Total Health Ministries
As the countries of East and Southern Africa gained independence, mission
hospitals and Christian health programs came under the direction of emerging national
churches. But since that time, there has been little integration of health institutions
into overall ministry of the sponsoring church. To minister to the whole person, churches
and their related health programs must integrate the practice of medicine with biblical
and traditional Africa perspectives of health as wholeness. Our vision for total health
ministries is expressed through our commitment to encouraging African church leaders to
integrate a biblically holistic approach to human needs into the curricula of key medical
and theological training institutions. Keys to this program are physician training
programs and development of materials to promote the concept of total health.
Trauma Healing and Reconciliation
Africa continues to be plagued with numerous acts of violence in the form of
inter-tribal rivalries, military coups, political instability. Tribalism remains the most
powerful cohesive force. The ethnic clashes that have destabilized the Great Lakes Region
in the past five years caught the attention of the international media when they erupted
in Rwanda in April 1994. The shock waves and aftershocks are still being felt in the
region.
This unfortunate situation poses great challenge to total health concerns, a challenge MAP East and Southern Africa has chosen to address. MAP has become a leader in training for, and coordination of, church-based ministries that promote peace-building and reconciliation. Workshops and consultations have brought together leaders from various countries, ethnic groups and denominations to foster a spirit of reconciliation. MAP's training materials and reconciliation newsletter are being used throughout the region by others involved this work.
Message from the Regional Director
Dr. Peter Okaalet
The vision of MAP International East and Southern Africa is a noble one. I am happy to join a team whose work has been termed as "focused, friendly, flexible, fast and faithful to God." I see MAP-ESA as part of the process that will produce a continent where people listen to and learn from one another irrespective of their race, sex, tribe or geographical location -- a continent whose people will discover and develop a capacity to meet their holistic health needs.
MAP-ESA is committed to supporting the church as it responds to its mandate for health, healing and reconciliation, and sees the church as the only institution that can transcend national and ethnic boundaries to bring wholeness of life, and healing to individuals, families, communities and nations in the region.
The challenge of addressing the needs in the region is still with us. I am optimistic that from experience gained, professional expertise and the support from MAP friends and partners, MAP-ESA will continue to promote and support the church in health and healing ministries to transform communities in the region.
Dr. Peter Okaalet has been the Regional Director of MAP East and Southern Africa since 1996. He is a Ugandan national and graduate of Makerere University and the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. He previously worked as a medical doctor engaged in health campaigns in both Uganda and Kenya. He and his wife, Sarah, have four children and live in Nairobi, Kenya.
Offices:
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