CAPA

Keynote speech of the Anglican Archbishop of Kenya and Bishop of All Saints’ Diocese, The Most Rev. Benjamin Mwanzia Nzimbi.

The theme of the workshop “Helping the Church accomplish its mission through communications” it timely as we face the challenges of the new millennium.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes communications as an “Act of imparting or transmitting especially news, information” etc.

So in the course of the 4-days you are gathered here as representatives the Anglican Church in Africa, you will endeavour to answer the 5Ws and 1H in order to communicate effectively.

Try individually or collectively to answer WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY and HOW and your work as communicators will be half done.

As you know, communications is an important component of all aspects of development particularly now that the world is becoming interlinked through the super highway of information technology. Talk about mobile phones; talk about electronic money transfers and above all, talk about the Internet.

The church in Africa as part of the Anglican Communion cannot afford to be left behind. The conventional communications through brochures, newsletters, magazines reports, etc, is slowly being overtaken by the more easy convenient and inexpensive internet. E-mail (Electronic mail) has taken the communications world by storm.

But not in al parts of Africa. while communication networked in some parts of our provinces can only be rivalled by the countries in the western world, in others, a simple telephone call from Kenya has to pass through Europe then bounce back to Africa.

Email would be a miracle. Yet as we meet today, it is necessary that we discuss how best we can strengthen communications in member provinces and coordinate the network of information in the Church.