AFRICAN THEOLOGY AS CONTEXT AND MISSION FOR HEKIMA UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

Abstract

The opening of Hekima College in 1984 concluded a
discernment process in which Pedro Arrupe SJ played a key role.
It also marked the beginning of the college’s journey to becoming
a school of theology. In the middle of the culmination and the beginning
was African theology, which determined the fruit of the ended discernment
and the destination of the started journey. This article discusses this
history, proposing that African theology was the context into which
Hekima was born and the mission it received from its founders. This was
in response to the post-World War II African reality that, by the 1970s, had
turned inculturation into an imperative on which depended the survival
of Christianity on the continent. At Hekima, theology was to answer
questions that Africans asked and solve problems and needs that Africans
felt. The article ends with a brief assessment of Hekima’s African-theology
performance in the last forty years.