news-portal domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /home/jubileeu/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 61211<\/sup><\/em>Give the king Your judgments, O God,
\n<\/em>And Your righteousness to the king\u2019s Son.
\n<\/em>2<\/sup><\/em>He will judge Your people with righteousness,
\n<\/em>And Your poor with justice.
\n<\/em>3<\/sup><\/em>The mountains will bring peace to the people,
\n<\/em>And the little hills, by righteousness.
\n<\/em>4<\/sup><\/em>He will bring justice to the poor of the people;
\n<\/em>He will save the children of the needy,
\n<\/em>And will break in pieces the oppressor.
\n<\/em>Psalm 72: 1-4<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n
Main Prayer Focus of the Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n
OVERVIEW OF THE WEEK\u2019S FOCUS<\/strong><\/p>\n
Of all continents on the earth, Africa the continent most endowed with natural resources. Africa is so rich and yet so poor. 30% of the world\u2019s minerals reserves sit in Africa but the continent only contributes 1% of global output and by 2013 had a total of 383 million people living in poverty accounting for 54% of the world\u2019s poor.[1]<\/a> The situation African countries face with regard to world trade was succinctly put by President Nyerere when he lamented.<\/p>\n
Africa supplies most of America\u2019s strategic minerals. China, which has over 50% of the 17 rare-earth minerals, is consolidating its hold by stockpiling these industrially strategic resources. [2]<\/a> The sources of these industrially strategic resources will probably be Africa this while Africa\u2019s leaders and peoples still sleep.[3]<\/a> Unfortunately this would be at the cost of Africa\u2019s prospective industrialization, unsuspecting as the continent usually is.[4]<\/a> If industrialized countries are doing it, African governments need to think quickly and deeply about setting aside strategic reserves of its resources for use in prospective industrialization drives or refusing to mine them at all until the countries are ready to industrialize.<\/p>\n
For centuries, Africa\u2019s trade with the rest of the world: engagement in slave trade, low-value agricultural production, and the present day extraction of minerals were all done with an overriding foreign interest. \u00a0Africa exports the best of its natural capital and importing back goods processed from that natural capital at multiple times the cost. Producing what we do not consume and selling it at very low prices and consuming what we do not produce while buying it at very high prices. It is a net loss both ways For example coffee African countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania are the among the top producers of coffee globally. Among these, only Ethiopia appears among the top fifteen countries that exported the highest\u00a0 dollar value of coffee in 2015. The list is populated by countries that do not grow a single tree of coffee.[5]<\/a> \u201cAfrican countries are trapped in a state of existence in which by giving away their natural capital (people, agricultural produce, mineral resources, hydrocarbons) to others to convert into their own productive capital, they forfeit the intermediating benefits that include factories, jobs, deepened and widened tax bases, reinforced financial services, broadened logistical industries, increased civil infrastructure, diversified exports and skilled manpower.\u201d[6]<\/a> The prices of Africa\u2019s main products \u2013 diamonds, coffee, oil, cocoa, cobalt, sugar, iron ore, tea, aluminium, gas, cotton, maize \u2013 are determined in the commodity markets overseas but not in Africa.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n
The Future<\/strong><\/p>\n
Uganda\u2019s future is intertwined with that of her neighbors and in many ways with that of the whole continent of Africa. The median person in Africa is 18 years old \u2013 half of Africa\u2019s population is under 18 and Africa is set to remain the youngest population in the world in the decades to come. According to projections by the United Nations, the median age in Africa will increase only to 21 in 2035 and to 24 in 2050. In other regions of the world, the median age will be 35 years old \u2013 almost 45 in East Asia and Pacific. According to UNICEF, by 2050, 1.8 billion babies will be born in Africa; the continent\u2019s population will double in size; and its under-18 population will increase by two thirds to reach almost 1 billion. Africa is the only region where the population is projected to keep increasing throughout the 21st<\/sup> century.[8]<\/a> Currently, there are 1.2 billion people on the continent, more than five times the population in 1950. By 2050, Africa’s population will double to 2.4 billion, eventually reaching 4.2 billion by the end of the century, just about the entire world population in 1977.[9]<\/a> Africa is not the first region in the world to undergo such rapid population growth. America in the nineteenth century, China and the Asian sub-continent in the first half of the twentieth also experienced the same.[10]<\/a> The difference with the African experience is that the growth is happening at a time of the most rapid global socio-economic and political changes ever, and from a rural unskilled population base. A further factor is that progress in medicine and information reduced mortality rates long before the society was ready to reduce its fertility rates.\u00a0 North America’s population surge included a proportion of urbanized migrants, businesspeople, and capitalists with skills and savings that helped to build the nation; India and China were able to isolate themselves for a while from the rest of the world while making rudimentary steps towards social and demographic transformation.\u00a0 Africa, on the other hand, has entirely open to outside influences. According to the World Population Review (2016) by around 2020, one out of every two newborn babies could be African. Being home to the world’s largest population of youth will require careful foresighted planning to reap this population dividend and avoid it becoming a burden or even worse, a source of instability.<\/p>\n
In addition to the rapid population growth is the large-scale migration to urban areas. By 2030 fifty percent of Africans will be living in cities, growing from 36 percent of the population in 2010. Africa’s population of potentially productive youth will be the highest in the world. The continent\u2019s urbanization rate, the highest in the world, can lead to economic growth and transformation, at par with or even better than the current trajectories of China and other East Asian countries. However, without transformation, it can steer further into increased inequality, urban poverty, the proliferation of slums, and even social chaos such as that of the ‘Arab Spring’.[11]<\/a> Laws, policies, and actions needed to reap real dividends from Africa’s urbanization are therefore critical in the continent’s transformation. The need for African leaders to develop a long-term thinking mindset in planning for the next generations cannot be overemphasized.<\/p>\n
We need leadership that will prepare us for this future which has emerged over the horizon.<\/p>\n
Pray that:<\/strong><\/p>\n
INSTITUTIONS PRAYER FOCUS FOR WEEK<\/strong> SEVEN<\/strong><\/p>\n
Pray for these institutions using the prayer guidelines in Chapter One:<\/strong><\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> (Ssepuuya, p.13)
\n[2]<\/a> (Ssepuuya, p.281)
\n[3]<\/a> (Ssepuuya, p.281)
\n[4]<\/a> (Ssepuuya, p.281)
\n[5]<\/a> (Ref Ssepuuya, p.36)
\n[6]<\/a> (Ssepuuya, p.41).
\n[7]<\/a> (Ssepuuya, p.59)
\n[8]<\/a>\u00a0 World Population Review, 2013
\n[9]<\/a> ibid
\n[10]<\/a>\u00a0 Cour et al., 1999
\n[11]<\/a> Mbadlanyana, Cilliers & Sibalukhulu, 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"