The debt burden of developing countries will feature high on the agenda of next year's Lambeth Conference according to the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Njongonkulu Ndungane.
Archbishop Ndungane, who is to chair the session on the debt crisis at the conference, said that the attention being given to the issue on the conference agenda was significant, as previous conferences had been dominated by the churches of Europe and North America.
"This time, representatives from the developing world and the southern hemisphere have been highly influential in setting the agenda. This is also indicative of the new positive role we in South Africa are called on to play," the archbishop said, in an address at the Martin Luther Center in Atlanta, USA, on 14 May. Details of his speech were also released in Johannesburg.
The issue of international debt is a major concern for developing countries, not least in Africa. Between 1980 and 1994, the total long-term debt stock in sub-Saharan Africa grew from US$61bn to $174bn. Of the worlds 32 severely indebted, low-income countries with an annual income of less than $695 per head, 25 are in Africa.
Christian Aid, a Church development agency in Britain and Ireland, has pointed out that in Uganda more than five times as much is spent on debt repayment as on health. In Mozambique, according to the agency, where average earnings are $80, the country's debt represents $311 per person.
In his address in Atlanta, Archbishop Ndungane called on Christian Churches in the United States to tackle the issue in an organised manner by creating an ecumenical commission. "The question we all face is whether we can speak of progress when, on the one hand, incredible technological advances make life easier for the affluent, but, on the other hand, have little or no impact on the lives of the poor or marginalised. "America - the 'land of the free' - is also the land of the computer whose brainpower is said to double every 18 months. Yet there are countless millions of people throughout the world who have no opportunity whatsoever to develop their brainpower or their God-given potential because they live in abject poverty," said Archbishop Ndungane, who succeeded Desmond Tutu as Archbishop of Cape Town last year.
No one could afford to stand aloof to their needs or merely to "give them hand-me-downs from the industrialised tables of the world".
"It is time to get next to them. It is time to empower them," said Archbishop Ndungane.