Nairobi, 05 November, 2019 / 3:56 am (ACI Africa).
The need to have Catholic entities including dioceses on the African continent operationalized without depending on donor funding was one of the key highlights at the recent social entrepreneurship conference during which people behind Catholic entities in Africa were encouraged to initiate socio-economic enterprises that can help achieve self-sustainability.
Speaking to ACI Africa on the sidelines of the conference, Comboni Missionary Br. Dr. Jonas Dzinekou Yawovi said, “As we are talking about sustainability of the Church today, parishes in each diocese need to create their own social enterprises that can improve the lives of the people and generate revenue to sustain the parishes.”
“Partnership and collaboration with the western world is important, but dependency will never solve our problems instead it (dependency) creates more problems,” Br. Yawovi who is the Director of the Institute of Social Transformation (IST) that hosted the conference said and added, “we therefore need to get out of the dependency syndrome and be able to work for our own development.”
“For dioceses to find ways on how to sustain themselves there is no magic formula, social entrepreneurship is the way to go,” Br. Yawovi emphasized ahead of the third Annual African Conference on Social Entrepreneurship (AACOSE).
The Togolese Missionary described the two-day conference that brought together practitioners and academicians within the field of social entrepreneurship in Africa as “a forum of learning, of creating connections and of finding ways to create synergies that can help us multiply sustainable enterprises in the continent.”
