Africa arises. (Newsdesk).

It was billed as a milestone on the road to a new Africa. An all-Africa conference, organized by MRA/Initiatives of Change (IC) in Nairobi, Kenya, drew groups from 16 African countries and eight other nations, from 31 May to 3 June.

Opening the conference--against a backdrop of famine, wars, poor leadership and moral malaise--Julius Khakula, MRA/IC Kenya chairman, gave a ringing call for the continent, `to begin to be noticed, to happen, to appear'. Efforts taken by African leaders and international organizations to address Africa's problems had failed to bring about regeneration, he said. People had failed to address the moral component. `Africans have lacked commitment to an ideal that would make the difference.'

James Mageria, is founder and CEO of Vision Africa, an initiative to fight the continent's bad news image and restore hope and confidence. He identified a lack of visionary leadership as the nub of Africa's crisis. The continent had lacked edifying moral leadership in politics. He called for a move from a politics of representation to that of accountability and participation, and referred to each individual's responsibility to God. `The morass in African leadership is created by leaders who are intellectually and physically empowered but without a spiritual backbone,' he said. `If African leaders were not educated, they would probably steal just a cow and not bring whole economies to their knees.'

Mageria illustrated how a simple initiative to change might affect nations and whole continents. In 1997, MRA/IC in Kenya had launched the Clean Election Campaign to prepare Kenyans for the multiparty general elections held that year. The MRA team, small in numbers and means, had laboured to reach thousands of Kenyans through the media, churches, schools and public meetings in a campaign whose ripples were still being felt. The Clean Election Campaign had since broadened its scope and given birth to the Clean Kenya Campaign.

The conference now agreed to form the Clean Africa Campaign. This would be coordinated in individual African countries, with the aim of ridding the continent of rot and providing it with much needed leadership.

It was also agreed to form a `travelling faculty'--a team of experienced moral leaders which would shuttle between African countries.

Mageria told how he had drawn inspiration from the Clean Election Campaign to launch the Ufungamano Initiative, Africa's first faith-based consultative forum on constitutional review in Kenya. His initiative had brought together 54 stakeholders in a process that led to the formation of the Kenya Constitutional Review Commission, and defused a constitutional crisis in the country.

John Bangura, from Sierra Leone and Denmark, said how his MRA/IC team had applied the strategy of clean election campaigns in the first democratic elections in Sierra Leone since the war. The clean elections concept `sold like hot cakes' in Sierra Leone and has since been exported to Ghana.

In a spirit of openness and trust, honesty and healing, participants shared experiences of change in their lives and what they were doing to initiate change around them.

Francis Kimani spoke about a group of four Kenyan lawyers who fight corruption in the Nairobi central business district. They protect Asian business people who have been easy game for unscrupulous public officers.

Warning that `what you can tolerate you cannot change', Amina Dikedi, an MRA/IC worker from Nigeria, asked whether Africans were angry enough to provide answers to the many questions bedevilling the continent. `You and I can renew the image of Africa by the way we live,' she said. `We need a sense of personal integrity and national and personal responsibility. My life is a signpost for someone else.'

In a poignant reflection on the civil war in South Sudan, a Southern Sudanese leader asked, `Will Africa arise if Sudan remains at war with itself?'

Khadija Hussein, founder of the charity, Sudanese Mothers for Peace, had been awarded Community Champion status by the British Government. She said, `People talk about distribution of ABCD to achieve peace but none mentions the hearts of men, the minds of men and the relationships between people. The heart of reconciliation is truth.' Mrs Hussein narrated how she had overcome a myriad of racial, religious and political barriers to work with southern Sudanese women in the Sudanese Mothers for Peace, including Angelina Teny who was at the conference. Both women have played a prominent role in the Sudan peace process, in the North and South respectively.

Participants from Rwanda, Congo and Burundi urged that peace should not be taken for granted. Gorretti Mukakalisa from Rwanda moved people to tears when she said that she did not know whether her husband was dead or alive. The spirit of the conference permeated even deeper in story telling groups, where delegates recounted their life stories to each other.

`The spiritual wisdom of African traditional values is something we in Europe need and lack,' said Jim Baynard-Smith from the UK. `Africa should be the continent of the 21st century.' He urged Africans not to allow their precious gifts of the heart to get lost by competing with Western materialism. African women--the refugee, war widow, single mother, leader--recounted moving tales that affirmed their faith in life. Two musical groups, Shades Classics, from the massive Kibera shanty town, and Balozi Africa, sang messages of hope.

The conference, dubbed Arise Africa, ended with a melting pot of African culture with phenomenal performances of song, dance, poetry, narratives and skits.

The next MRA/IC All-Africa Conference will be held in Ghana in 2003.