Your Sons and Daughters Shall Migrate

How Will the Youth Boom in Africa Change Mission?

Welcome to “Global Witness, Globally Reimagined,” where we dream about mission in a postcolonial world. Every Thursday, I share one thought that has spoken to me in the week, some resources I trust will be helpful to you, and three exciting quotes about mission. I pray one of these will energise you in the coming week.

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1. Thought I Can’t Shake Off

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On 3 November 2023, Declan Walsh and Hannah Reyes Morales published an article in the New York Times entitled, “Old World, Young Africa: How the Youth Boom in Africa Will Change the World.” When I read it, my overactive mind immediately wondered, “How will the youth boom in Africa change mission?” Walsh and Morales argued, persuasively in my opinion, that the explosion of a young population in Africa has implications for the entire world. They wrote;

Within the next decade, Africa will have the world’s largest workforce, surpassing China and India ... By the 2040s, it will account for two out of every five children born on the planet ... Up to one million Africans enter the labour market every month, but fewer than one in four get a formal job. Unemployment in South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised nation, runs at a crushing 35 per cent.

Last week, the Government of Malawi sent some 221 young people to Israel to work in Agriculture (fruit picking, etc) on a salary of $1500 per month for a five-year contract. There has been a great deal of mixed reaction to this, especially in light of Israel’s war in Gaza. The young Malawians themselves are happy to have a job. There is no way they could all have jobs in Malawi that pay even $1000. This is the beginning of a new wave of labour migration from Africa to other continents. We will soon see many African governments export their youthful “human resources” to Europe as well. There is a lot we can say about this. The current global economic structures that make it necessary for some governments to give over their young to indentured labour overseas, even in the shadows of both the Trans-Atlantic and the Arabic slave trades and the European colonisation of Africa, need to be questioned.

In the end, we know that many more young Africans will migrate. I am so persuaded of this that I invited participants at a conference in Nairobi a few weeks ago to consider reading the Old Testament prophesy of Joel with a fresh set of eyes. Where Joel says, "I shall pour out my Spirit upon all people, your sons and daughters shall prophesy" (Joel 2:28), we may today say, "Your sons and daughters shall migrate." The migration of young Africans from the continent is inevitable. Many will risk their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea on a dinghy to get to Europe, believing it is better to die attempting to cross the seas than to struggle at home. Of course, for many, anywhere is better than home.

For those of us interested in the spread of the gospel, I wonder what this mass migration of young Africans says. Most of these young migrants will be Christians. (A majority of sub-Saharan countries have at least 70 per cent of their populations identifying as Christians, plus, the median age of African Christians is around 18). What kind of support will the African church need to prepare their young people for mission as they migrate? What resources will be needed? And how can those resources be located and made accessible to them in Africa? And, finally, what missiologies do we need to equip and empower these young Africans for mission in other continents?

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2. Resources I am Enjoying

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Podcast: Dr Sheila Akomiah-Conteh | The Changing Landscape of the Church in Post-Christendom Britain

In this episode of the African Theological Podcast, Harvey Kwiyani hosts Sheila Akomiah-Conteh, a Ghanaian scholar based in Glasgow, Scotland. Akomiah-Conteh’s doctoral research at the University of Aberdeen led her to examine church growth phenomenon in Scotland. Her focus was particularly on those churches planted in Glasgow between the years 2000 and 2016. One immediate discovery for her was that a large proportion of the new churches in Glasgow resulted from the pioneering efforts of Africans. Of course, this is generally the church planting situation for most parts of Britain. More so, it is not without significant implications for how we talk about and do mission in the UK today, including our church growth research. It is also fascinating to hear Akomiah-Conteh touch on her research process, which saw her take some interesting steps to make her research happen. Here is an insightful conversation, indeed.

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3. Quotes I am Pondering

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• Since the church is an interface of contact between the Christian faith and the culture, contextualization is necessary if the biblical message is to be understood for what it is. — Fabrice Katembo

• If the Church in any part of the world (north or south) fails to ask self-critical, faith-based questions in its own context, if it occupies itself only with monitoring other peoples, and if it exercises a supervisory role over their questions and presumes a superior right to judge their answers, then that Church has lost the sense of its Christian gospel life and mission. — Teresa Okure

• For effective missions we need to understand humans as much as we understand the Gospel. — Tite Tiénou & Paul Hiebert

I pray that you will be faithful to the mission God has for you this week.