Finding Your Creative Groove
Allan Gerh
Africa, the world’s richest continent, has many advantages. These include
natural resources, great weather, great mineral wealth. Kenya alone is the
world’s largest tea producing country and a huge coffee exporter, supplies 32%
of the world’s cut-flowers, and is renowned for its’ athletic ability. Also has
the most educated black work force in Africa.
Despite all these advantages, Kenya still faces many challenges:
1. Water: Kenya has enough rainfall to satisfy the needs of 6-7 times our
population, and yet every other year there’s a drought!
2. Energy: Only 8% of the Kenyan population has electricity to their homes the
rest use charcoal and firewood, yet we only have 1.7% forest cover.
3. Unemployment: A bulging youth population and yet the inability to create
meaningful employment
4. Poor Savings Culture: This makes us a net consumer as opposed to being a net
producer.
5. Poor Leadership: Apart from a few shining examples (Nelson Mandela, Paul
Kagame), Africa is not known for good leadership
Is this how things are meant to be? Has God cursed Africa to stay this way? I
don’t believe so.
1 Sam 13:5-7, 16-22
Israel was in a terrible state and all her problems could be traced to one major
undoing …….there was no blacksmith in Israel
Israel faced a technologically and numerically superior enemy, and all they had
were crude inadequate weapons. Even worse, to prepare these inadequate weapons
for war, they had had to depend on their enemies.
Africa too, fights with inadequate weapons such as:
1. National Miss-Education: Whereas our education system should make us into
change agents, equipping us to CREATE solutions, our ‘colonial’ system of
education provides us with inadequate weapons. Where are Kenya’s blacksmiths?
2. Parental Miss-Guidance: Rather than provide employment for many Kenyans,
our parent’s generation brainwashed us such that all we wanted to do was study,
get a secure job and retire on our pension, i.e provide a comfortable lifestyle
for ourselves . Where are Kenya’s blacksmiths?
3. Scarcity Mentality: The myth of the national cake says that there are
limited national resources that need to be shared out with everyone. The
problem is that this so-called ‘national cake’ has been shrinking It’s time to
stop dividing the cake and start baking itWhere are Kenya’s blacksmiths?
Kenya’s ‘blacksmiths’ today are her entrepreneurs and also her ‘intrapreneurs’
(intrapreneurs are entrepreneurs employed by companies). Even for those of you
who are employed, you must gain a name as a person who creates solutions
wherever you’re assigned! Where are Kenya’s blacksmiths?
A problem is an opportunity for a solution…God created you a problem solver.
The Pastor M Challenge:
February is our month of prayer and fasting. I would like to challenge each of
our life groups as they pray and fast this month to identify the problems
around them in their neighborhood. To come up with a creative, cost-effective
solution that they will employ to tackle that problem. Send a one page write-up
of that solution to in...@mavunochurch.org. At the end of the month, a panel
will go through these solutions and pick the most creative. We will then give
you an award of KSH. 50,000 to either invest in that solution or to donate to a
charity of your choice. If you’re in a Mizizi group, you’re also welcome to
participate! If you’re not in either, then get a group of friends together and
engage. You are not limited to one entry per group!
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