Delegates from 15 African countries attended this landmark conference. It was both the first conference to be organised by CPCHEA, the African initiative providing an interdisciplinary network for Christians in higher education and the African expression of the international body IAPCHE, that unites CPCHEA with a world wide community of Christian scholarship. It also marked the 39th year of IAPCHE's operations.

The conference began with a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of IAPCHE at Potchefstroom, South Africa in 1975.

We also took the opportunity to celebrate the establishment and development of CPCHEA over the last five years as an African initiative which is sharing, promoting and extending the same vision as IAPCHE's partner in the African context.

During the celebration, Prof Faith Nguru (at left of picture) invited Bennis van der Walt and Stuart Fowler,  as the two persons present who had participate at both the birth of IAPCHE and CPCHEA, to cut the birthday cake.

Cutting the cake

The various speakers, discussions and workshops developed a coherent, and exciting vision of the Christian community in Africa not only penetrating every corner of African society with the liberating light of the Gospel but also showing the world a more authentic pathway to devevlopment. The serious problems that we face, not only in Africa but in the rest of the world were not ignored. But the central theme was the vision of blazing a trail of hope by acting together as God's people in the faith that works by love.

In order to facilitate this communal agenda of hope, it was decided that we need to establish a Secretariat for CPCHEA with staff that are paid so that they can focus their time and energies on consolidating and expanding the supportive network of Christian scholars and scientists across Africa that was represented at this conference. There was unanimous agreement that this Secretariat should be located in Kenya with Pr Isaac Mutua, the chair of the conference organising committee as its executive head and chair of the CPCHEA Council.

A modesr budget has been drawn up for this purpose and work has begun on locating sources of funding for this budget so that the vision can become reality. One way of helping with this is to become a paid-up member of CPCHEA, either as individuals and institutions. For more about membership visit the membership site, or contact Isaac Mutua: