A Concept of Connectedness

Ubuntu and African Friends’ Giving

Kenyan theologian and philosopher John Mbiti described the African philosophical concept of ubuntu: “I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am.” This idea contrasts with the more individualistic views of European philosophers such as René Descartes, who concluded, “I think therefore I am.”

The tradition of ubuntu (a word that derives from the Bantu languages of southern Africa) informs contemporary African Friends’ views of financially supporting their meetings and sharing with people facing poverty. Quakers from Kenya, Burundi, and Rwanda reflected on ubuntu and its influence on members’ financial commitment to their meetings and those in particular economic need.

“My concept of ubuntu emanates from the tenets of ‘I am because we are.’ The ‘we’ in this case is the monthly meeting,” said Sussie Ndanyi, a member of Langata Friends Church in Nairobi, Kenya. Ndanyi is also the deputy general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Kenya.

Ndanyi’s Friends meeting provides shared values, community, common meals, worship opportunities, and a chance to sing in the choir. She describes financial support as the lubricant that enables the wheels of the meeting’s activities to keep turning. Members of the meeting are willing to give money in accordance with scriptural advice, according to Ndanyi. Congregants realize that their contributions to the meeting benefit the surrounding community, so ubuntu motivates their giving.

“The concept of ubuntu has really shaped how I give tithes, offerings, and gifts at church. . . . Coming from a third-world country where most people struggle to make ends meet, the little that I get, I give in church to help those in need,” said Mercy Miroya, a member of Mukuyu Meeting in Kitale, Kenya, which is part of East Africa Yearly Meeting of Friends–North.

In addition to being motivated by ubuntu, Friends give to their meetings in order to follow the example of the Wise Men who brought gifts to the infant Jesus, according to Bainito Wamalwa, a member of Mukuyu Meeting. In addition to financial donations, Friends who are farmers offer gifts of bananas, chickens, and eggs.

Nizigiyimana Louis Pasteur, legal representative at Burundi Evangelical Friends Church, noted that a similar practice occurs in his country. In rural churches, Friends have a designated giving period called “firstfruits” in which congregants involved in farming and agriculture donate their first crops and firstborn cattle.

In Rwanda, the concept of ubuntu takes into account individually owned cows, goats, and other livestock. Members donate with community, family, and church in mind, explained Hakizimana Jean Baptiste, pastor of Kigali (Rwanda) Meeting. If one person offers hospitality to another, the implication is that they also have hosted the relatives, friends, and community of the guest, according to Hakizimana Jean Baptiste.

Ubuntu proscribes hoarding resources for oneself and instead urges individuals to share what they have, according to Esther Mombo, who is a member of Nyanko Meeting in Kenya. Mombo is a professor of history in the School of Theology at St. Paul’s University in Limuru, Kenya.

“Ubuntu as a concept is a concept of connectedness. It is a concept of living in community where people have enough,” Mombo said.

The Bible tells believers to tithe 10 percent of their income to support the temple priests, Mombo noted. Modern Quakers can use their tithes to pay their pastors’ salaries.

“They’ve taken their time to be of service,” Mombo said of Friends who work as pastors.

In addition to shaping African Friends’ thoughts on financially supporting their meetings, ubuntu inspires Quakers on the continent to share their resources with people facing poverty, both in their meetings and in the larger community.

Nizigiyimana Louis Pasteur of Burundi Evangelical Friends Church explained that the church has a department of mission that evangelizes but also determines the material needs of members and attenders. To help people facing poverty, the church offers instruction in entrepreneurship. The church also collects an offering each Sunday to support people facing poverty.

“What we are doing is we help the needy when we look at a particular case,” said Ronny Witaba, general secretary of Tuloi Yearly Meeting and member of Kamoron Friends Church in Nandi County, Kenya.

Tuloi Yearly Meeting has provided help in building houses and giving food, according to Witaba. The northeast area of the country is arid, so people need a lot of help with food. The United Society of Friends Women also helps with material needs in the country. The yearly meeting also particularly helps single women and widows who need economic assistance.

Some Friends have skills but no capital, Witaba noted. For example, some Quakers are tailors and welders but do not have the money to invest in equipment needed for their trades. The yearly meeting, which consists of six monthly meetings and 42 village meetings, would like to start a project to assist skilled workers by providing machines needed to do their work, as well as help marketing their products.

People who live in villages often rely on the financial assistance of their adult children who work in cities, according to Wamalwa of Mukuyu Meeting in Kenya. During COVID, village residents experienced food insecurity because so many of their adult children lost jobs in the cities. The church contributed maize and money to help the villagers for a year.

In 2021, a semi-arid county made drier by climate change had a landslide that demolished the marketplace, so the church provided food to those impacted, Wamalwa explained.

Deacons are responsible for gathering money for people in need, according to Jean Paul Nsekanabo, pastor of Kagarama Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, and vice superintendent of Rwanda Yearly Meeting. Members also express their sense of ubuntu through visits to people in hospitals and prisons. When a family’s daughter is about to get married, women from the meeting visit the mother of the bride. The meeting also provides coffins for families who cannot afford to bury their departed loved ones, according to Nsekanabo.

When Quakers in rural areas harvest their crops, they bring the food to the meeting and share with the congregation and any economically vulnerable people, according to David Bucura, a member of Kicuro Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda.

The meeting has a committee of deacons who determine who in the congregation needs help, Bucura explained. The yearly meeting, monthly meeting, and local churches all have budgets, each of which has a line dedicated to helping financially vulnerable people.

In keeping with the spirit of ubuntu, the meeting is sending a missionary from Rwanda to war-torn South Sudan to plant a Quaker meeting there, according to Bucura.

Kigali Meeting reaches out to people who are starving, according to the meeting’s pastor, Hakizimana Jean Baptiste. There is a department in the monthly meeting that is concerned with both spiritual and physical needs. The meeting has smaller gatherings such as home groups, youth groups, and women’s groups, each of which has a leader who keeps abreast of members’ spiritual and temporal needs. The leader will discuss participants’ problems and see if they can help with advice and practical support.

Churches have been closed by the government, and this limits giving because it’s hard to find out how people are doing. Leaders of the youth groups that meet despite their church being closed compile donation lists, so the rest of the congregation can address members’ needs. Some common examples of practical support include building houses for members, paying for funerals, funding children’s school tuition, and addressing food insecurity, Hakizimana Jean Baptiste explained.

The congregation has not gathered for worship for four months, due to government closures, according to Hakizimana Jean Baptiste. New regulations require pastors to have theological degrees. The law requiring divinity degrees included a grace period of several years for pastors to go to seminary. The regulations require church buildings to be located outside residential areas due to congregations’ loud singing. The law also mandates that church buildings be constructed to avoid collapse and that they include parking lots accessible to people with disabilities. The government stipulates that church buildings must have lightning rods. In addition, churches must provide bathrooms that are accessible to people with disabilities, as well as accessible hand-washing stations. The church is working on meeting the requirements but has run out of money for the moment. 

Some church leaders in Rwanda have been involved in stealing congregants’ money and promising believers financial blessings that never materialized, Hakizimana Jean Baptiste explained. These debacles have discouraged would-be donors from contributing, even to reputable congregations.

“It’s so hard to reach out to the community if we’re not meeting together,” Hakizimana Jean Baptiste observed. In the meantime, Hakizimana Jean Baptiste holds Bible study groups for congregants, which allows him to check on the needs of some members. He hoped the church would reopen by Christmas.

Not only does ubuntu lead Friends to support their own congregations, it also leads them to share resources with people in the wider community with specific material needs. Churches and meetings pass around a special offering basket where people can contribute to help those in vulnerable economic situations, according to Bucura. Bucura and other African Friends grew up with the concept of ubuntu and bring this understanding of generosity to their giving. Bucura was the fifteenth child in his family and his parents taught him that if he had something to eat, he had to share it with his siblings.

“Ubuntu is remembering your neighbor and loving your neighbors as yourself,” Bucura said.

Ubuntu involves treating people in extreme financial need with love and respect. 

A related avenue of sharing that is rooted in traditional African values is the harambee, which means pulling together to support those in material need. For example, the community might share resources such as skill and money to build a hospital, house, or school. Mombo visited a meeting in which an elderly person did not have a home so the church community constructed a home for the person.

Meetings currently encourage members to tithe, according to Mombo. In rural villages, tithes can take the form of bringing eggs, chickens, sugar cane, and bananas to share with those in need or to be sold to raise money for the congregation.

African Friends’ views of supporting their monthly meetings and helping those facing poverty have evolved over the years. Before Kenya’s Mukuyu Meeting started, the missionaries who settled in the area did not request money, according to Wamalwa.

“We thought we go to church to be helped but not to give for the less privileged,” Wamalwa said.

Kenyan meetings own vast tracts of land donated by missionaries and early Kenyan Quakers, according to Ndanyi of Langata Friends Church. However, they are often cash-poor because they lack a formal collection system to generate income to pay clergy, maintain properties, and give to charity, she explained. Since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, more Kenyan Quakers have earned advanced degrees, leading to greater personal wealth and increased donations to meetings.

Colonialism weakened the traditional reliance on ubuntu. When Quakers arrived in Kenya in 1900, communities shared property communally. The newly arrived Quakers initially followed the model of common ownership in establishing Christian villages, according to Esther Mombo, history professor in the School of Theology at St. Paul’s University in Limuru, Kenya. Britain officially colonized Kenya in 1920. Colonialism caused economic and cultural changes. Money, not land or animals, became the currency.

Mombo’s grandmother was among the first women from her village to go to the mission center where she learned to read and write. Communalism was still prevalent in Mombo’s grandmother’s time. People lived in community and worked in shared gardens.

Colonialism led to private ownership of land, according to Mombo. Those who went to school prepared to do jobs in the colonial framework. Instead of relying primarily on sharing or bartering, people earned money to buy things. The concept of money changed the historic system of sharing livestock and property and instead promoted individualism.

“So one could say individualism, the change from communalism to individualism, is basically a colonial and Christian aspect,” Mombo said.

Ubuntu can reach worldwide, according to Wamalwa. Quakers from the global north can express their sense of community with Friends in the global south by supporting such programs as efforts to dig boreholes to provide clean water, establishing a resource center for girls at risk of child marriage, and funding schools for female students.

People with a lot of money are poor in other ways; everyone has something to give, Mombo noted. Giving should be rooted in social justice and should be a way donors can challenge systems that impoverish people, Mombo suggested.