SECTION IV ECONOMICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (An excerpt from Equipping the New African Peacebuilder by Titus K. Oyeyemi Copy right Titusoye04/04 - APPLI/AFPLI) In this section of the curriculum, we shall develop courses in areas of economics of peace, environmental development, international relationships, management and leadership, and socio-cultural adjustments. The economics of peace course will review the equitable distribution of human, material, and natural resources in the African context with a view to identify how economic injustice contributed to the various forms of conflicts in Africa. The course will also highlight the permanent and variable factors that contributed to economic injustice in Africa and would recommend appropriate solutions where possible. The environmental development course will investigate the ecological implications of violence in Africa.   With the help of statistical analyses, we will evaluate the cost of wars in Africa in relations to the economic wellbeing of the people, health, education and other welfare issues.  We will attempt to introduce the students to ideas and policies in environmental sanitation and beautification so that with the help of learning from appropriate sources the students could create a renewed affection for their environments, love them, care for and cherish them. Students will also be taught how to spend quality time for the care of their environment. The management and leadership course will analyze, evaluate and explore the principles of management and leadership techniques that could be beneficial to Africans. While other nations of the world are undertaking special programs to develop leadership, Africa is killing leadership through neglect, discouragement and lack of training. The socio-cultural adjustment course will consolidate the concepts that have been developed in all other courses.  It will be packaged for a forward looking approach to new character formation. The student of African peacebuilding will not only be a teacher of these new ways of life, but he or she will be a catalyst in the development and implementation of the new lifestyles. The International relations course will focus on creating an understanding of how communities of nations function.  Just as no man can be an island, so also no nation can remain shut up without interacting with other nations of the world. Since the concepts and principles of macro and micro economics affect all nations of the world almost alike, African nations would need to sharpen their understanding of these principles in their immediate and remote interaction with the international communities. The courses in this section will not present mere head or book knowledge.  Efforts will be made to see that the total person of the student is engaged: soul, body and spirit.  A conspicuous thread that runs throughout all this work is the creation of a new Africa, where everyone will cultivate the sense of belonging and contributing to the African community.  According to Parker Palmer, “no-one can be a person unless he belongs to a community.”  It is true that no-one can rise above his or her environment, but collectively, a dedicated and willing community can bring a resounding change to their environment.  Africa cannot remain a backward continent for ever.  It is time to stop being beggar nations, because the more a person begs, the more beggarly he gets. Economics does not condone begging, but it needs a moral value built upon honesty and fairness. ECONOMICS OF PEACE This course is so-named because the idea is to design an economic course that will promote the cultivation of a peaceful lifestyle among Africans. However, answers would have to be provided to the following questions before one can find a basis for economics of peace in Africa. 1.        Why have classical economic systems failed to work for Africa? 2.        If Africans develop a new economic order will the rest of the world allow it to work? 3.        Can Africans look inward to find solutions to their economic problems? To answer the first question, one would need to do extensive analysis in the areas of history, politics, culture and governance in Africa.  If it were possible to use every known economic theory as the numerator and the African peculiar situation as the denominator, there is no way one can arrive at a positive ratio.   The answer will always be less than one and always in the negative. Let me put this in another form.   Historically, politically, culturally, religious-wise or in government, there is no known or proven economic theory that has ever been developed to promote the economic wellbeing pertinent to Africans way of life.   And where the plights of the grassroots had caught the sympathy of the international economic planners, there is always the problems of implementation, because the clique of African elites in charge always tinker and toy with the future of their people. The factors that were responsible for this situation had been discussed in other parts of this paper; therefore, it is not worth repeating them here. There have been solutions upon solutions proffered, but unfortunately none of them had the interest of the Africans as its focus.  They were always externally motivated with no real consideration or thoughts for the plights of the grassroots.  May be intentions are economically sound, but the applications and implementations are devoid of human feelings. One thing that is alarming however is that the trend continues.  Africa’s need for reprisal continued to be ignored.  African governments still have to obey World Bank and IMF external conditionalities to benefit from so-called debt relief. Most of these stringent conditions can be regarded as consolidation of economic strangulation or outright predation, because instead of freeing the much needed economic resources, it continued to strangulate them.   In its publication of February 8, 2004, with the title: “Africa, Who Owes Whom?” Africa Focus highlighted the plights of African governments and African peoples in several ways.  In one particular case, the report says: “Congo’s people both need and deserve support to consolidated peace, construct democracy, save lives, and rebuild their country.  Creditors like the World Bank and the U.S. government should not be using old and illegitimate debts to drain more money from the country and impose outside control on economic policy.”  The most unfortunate thing is that these restrictions have no boundaries.  They just do not have a human face.  They extended directly or indirectly to health, education, medication, communication, transportation, and so on and so forth. The next question is “Can Africans develop a homemade economic system and if they do will the rest of the world allow it to work?”  The answer to the first part of this question is a resounding yes, but the second part attracts a capital NO.  It is a forgone conclusion that all the western economic theories have not worked for Africa, because the mindsets of Africans and socio-cultural settings are completely different from those of the West and Europe.  We will deceive ourselves for the next century if we think that the average African will pick information and ideas from books and written materials as easily as the average Westerner or European.  There must be a way of telling things to Africans if we desire a change, most especially economic matters. All factors that are considered by classical economists as essential to economic growth are available in abundance in Africa, but they have been consistently misallocated, wrongly distributed, or outrightly confiscated.  Africa had more than necessary suffered by the syndromes of economic double bind.   For Africa to survive her people had to insist on formulating a new system of economics that would take the nature of transit economics.  Even though Africans are still living in their countries, they should conjure a mentality of one in transit, on a pilgrimage or even a flight.  Anyone in flight will not take with him anything that could hinder his speed of flight. Things that Africans should not take with them in this flight include: 1.        The odious debt,  which records have shown to have been repaid three times over.  According to the February issue of African Focus, “African nations have paid their debt three times over in the past ten years alone, yet African nations are three times as indebted as they were ten years ago.”   Those who are wise will see that in the last twenty years, Africa had been forced to begin another era of misuse, just as it was during the European Renaissance. While Europe was growing and developing in the 16th century, coming out of the Dark and Middle Ages, praise to the Renaissance, Africa was being enslaved and her able bodied manpower being stolen and transported across the great Atlantic Ocean for slave labor.  In the last twenty or thirty years, the Western and European world had been accumulating social security funds to cater for and maintain their living standard when they grow old and retire.  The great debate through the United States of America these days is how to refurbish Medicaid and other senior benefits that are paid through the social security system. Interestingly, the US is already preparing how to handle the case of their baby boomers that will soon enter their retirements.  But the opposite is the case with Africa.  The great debate is how to make the youth of Africa pay for debts they did not owe.  The African governments are saddled with debts that were not properly owed.  Several years ago, when the European industries had surplus machineries to dispose of they talked African governments into buying them. These machineries were in the form of Airports, Seaports, Steel Rolling Mills, Waterworks, Oil Refineries, and toxic wastes,  but schools were not among them, technologies were not part of them, the health of the citizens were completely left out. For example, Nigeria contracted for a steel rolling mill in the 80’s. Up till now the mill has not been completed and no steel had rolled out of its furnaces.  Yet the contract continued to be revalidated.  Children who were born in the year the contract was signed had become great grand parents. Some have finished university education.  Yet no-one thinks it is time to stop or cancel this economic draining project. I can still remember the cliché used by those fast talking great marketers of those loans.  They convinced African governments to accumulate unwitting loans by such statements as these: “You have not borrowed enough that is why you have not turned your economy around.” They were the ones who calculated the Net Present Values of the minerals resources that are under the soil of African countries.  They were the experts who knew how all the debts can be financed through those mineral resources.  They include the term “commercials” in every contract to bribe government officials.  They made friends with African leaders and enticed them with big money and material gifts including building chains of houses for them and allocating stockholdings for them in foreign countries and helped them to siphon money to foreign banks in a bid to encourage them to sign frivolous contracts. Even though it was obvious that Africans did not have the money to pay for such machineries, these businessmen arranged finances with their own appointed bankers. The solution to this problem is to cancel these odious debts so that the new Africans in transit will not be burdened by them. All foreign peace activists and donor organizations should persuade their home countries to drop those frivolous debts. There was a principle first used by the United States in 1898 when it conquered Cuba.  She repudiated Cuban debts to former colonial power Spain because the loans never had the consent of the people. More recently, the U.S. is now using the same argument for Iraq.  So if the Africans will be allowed to start a transit economy afresh, they should not carry the burden of these odious loans any further.  The creditors should take the losses and not the people of Africa. The creditors were responsible for giving bad loans, not the innocent Africans. 2.        The Narrow Self-Interest Mentality – Three types of self-interest had influenced economic thoughts and actions throughout the ages.  They are the narrow self-interest, the benign self-interest and the just self-interest.   All these theories were developed by Western and European thinkers and had influenced economics of nations in various ways.  The little analysis that I will make in the following paragraphs will show that Africans had not gained much positive benefits from these theories. It is interesting to note that the goodness or badness of any of these types of self-interest is measured in terms of morality.  For example, the narrow self-interest, developed by Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), emphasized that moral restraints are irrelevant as long as the pursuit of self-interest brings pleasure and no pain to the individual.  This school of thought believes that a point may come when evil will turn to good and bring the utmost benefit to the society, because according to its supporters “Even the most heinous person will end up unintentionally serving the common good.”    The second type of self-interest is the benign self-interest, otherwise known as the moral sympathy, developed by Adam Smith (1723-1790), in his work, The Theory of Moral Sympathy. The thrust of this school of thought was that “moral sympathy is the key ingredient in successful social organization.”   According to Halteman, “This sympathy consists of a person’s desire for social approval and, therefore, his willingness to evaluate his behavior from the vantage point of a disinterested third party.”   Halteman went further to say that: “This vantage point allows for more objective moral judgments by pushing aside personal bias and greed.” He opined that “true self-interest involves this quality of sympathy and provides a built-in moral dimension lacking in Mandevillian narrow self-interest.” The third type of self-interest is the one developed by John Rawls.  In his analysis of justice John Rawls suggested that “appropriate moral behavior” produces what an unbiased observer would prescribe for a society,  if he or she were faced with the obligation to re-distribute wealth enough to reduce the probability of starving in a given third-world country, as if he was born in such an undesirable location.   Consequently, John Rawls developed the concept of the “veil of ignorance”, which is similar to Adam Smith’s moral sympathy.  According to Halteman, “the pursuit of self-interest must be conditioned by a detached unbiased moral quality if it is to produce social harmony.” My readers who understand African’s economic attitudes will agree with me that while these conditions were culturally possible they were absent in the true sense of economics in Africa.  An economics of peace would need to be introduced to reverse the situation. Several writers of the Enlightenment Age believed that “humanity is basically good.” Adam Smith was one of them and he proposed that the exercise of self-interest is really the practice of behavior approved by impartial moral judgment. John Rawls also expected the exalted re-distributors of wealth to be above board and impartial morally. Adam Smith talked about a third party. Could that third party be God, Religion or Conscience?  Was this third party actually disinterested as advocated by deism and modernism? Rawls also talked about accident of birth, which should force the distributor to develop a moral sense of justice.   Mandeville also talked about the common good, though he left morality out of his argument. Contrary to the thinking of many African leaders, capitalism as practiced by the West is conspicuously guided by inbuilt morality that works the invisible hands of its clock. You could call this the rule of law and the respect for the democratic constitution of their countries. The questions to ask are: How did all these Western European thoughts impacted Africa? Where did this development leave Africans south of the Saharan?  Contrary to the true nature of Africans south of the Saharan, narrow self-interest was foreign to these people who were by culture, polygamous and usually consisted of large and extended families. Individualism became a bane and narrow self-interest became the order of the day. In spite of all evidences to the contrary, it is still possible for Africans to develop a morally induced economic system where strict individualism and narrow self-interest could be downplayed. 3.        Ethnoreligious Bigotry – One big mistake that Africans continued to make is the parochial thinking that only their one tribe or one religion is the best for everyone and all the people.  Africa was not created like that.  Africa is multi-ethnic and multi-religious. In the long run some natural phenomenon might change the situation, but it is wrong to force the change through economic and political manipulations.  It is even worse for anyone to think that these changes should be pursued through ethnoreligious wars and conquests in this twenty-first century. Before modernism and postmodernism, Africans had been pluralistic in nature and culture.  Except for few political misgivings, Africa could have easily overcome her tribal- related troubles.  The whole essence of developing the structured education for peace is for the purpose of eradicating tribal hatred which in my opinion is the bedrock of identity conflicts in Africa. 4.        Letting Others Do the Thinking – This aspect of the gabbage that the Transit Economics cannot afford to be burdened with has many facets.  One aspect is to stand outside the cycle of productivity and wait for others to do the hard thinking and the hard work and then pounced on them and snatched the rewards rightly and legally belonging to others.  We can then predate on their sweats as mere distributors, shop keepers, consumers or blatant thieves by adding no specific value of our own.  An example of this condition is the large amount of wealth exhibited by many African leaders that are not backed by productivity of any form.  These wealth have not resulted from lotteries, capital gains or windfalls, but from misappropriation of the collective wealth of the nations by few individuals who neither own any productive capital or intellect. These people are everywhere: in government, in industries, in commerce, and in religious houses.  The only thing that gives them the license to perpetrate their heinous activities is position of thrust to which they have been appointed, elected or inherited.  This can be regarded as abuse of power or abuse of office. No one is left out: from the street candy-hawker to the president of corporations, chancellors of universities, kings and bishops, everyone’s interest is how to cheat in his “own market place.” Another form of this situation is when a nation allows a foreign consultant to completely represent its interest abroad.  These consultants do all your thinking for you because they are experts in their own field.   They present you with voluminous reports into which they have stuffed all manners of statistics and calculations that you can never finish reading even if you are given the whole time in the world.  At signature time, they stuff you mouth with large quantities of sweets, chocolate, cheeses and red wines until your hearts and minds are tired, your hands are weakened and your eyes dulled, to be active.  As soon as you signed the dotted lines, you and your country become their guinea pigs.  They can lead you to the slaughter slab at their whims and caprices.  Should you show any sign of reluctance or struggle for freedom, they give you more doses of their killer pills: irresistible bribes and commercials.  They could even ask you to name your own price, a vacation in the Bahamas or stockholding in any star hotel in their home countries. Recent events have shown that these so-called experts have misled their own countries too, and cannot be truly regarded as saints any more in their professional fields of expertise.  These groups of experts misadvised the Americans farmers into acquiring huge farming loans in the 80’s. But the difference is that while their home countries had several schemes to safeguard or recover from such misadvise, the African nations do not.  In the United States, the rule of law makes it difficult for anyone to go scot-free with a crime, no matter how highly placed the individual may be.  But in Africa, the local perpetrator of a financial fraud is an untouchable because he has government immunity, and his external counterpart is an unreachable, and that “third party” feels that remaining silent is the fairest thing to do because according to a dictum of equity “those who warm themselves with the fires of fraud should not complain if singed.” The third question has to do with looking inward.  If Africans are prepared to look inward for strength for progress and development, they can find it.  If the colonial rulers of the 20th Century had been accused of divide and rule, what can we accuse the Africans of the 21st century, destroy and rule?  It is a true saying that it is hatred not love that translates to votes, especially in multi-ethnic and multi-religious settings.   But Africans have potentials to overcome these petty squabbles.  We are religious and spiritual.  We can pray and are hospitable.  We are learned, educated and wise.  We love our families.  We are young (though frustrated) but yet we are brave, strong, healthy and energetic.  What we lack is a collective will to move the continent forward because we are selfish and morally bankrupt and delinquent. If Africans wants development, they should be prepared to pay the price for it in the form of a national will to overcome our economic weaknesses. 5.        Deliberate destruction of other tribes’ economic livelihood – Whether for political, tribal or religious reasons, African should stop the physical, calculated and deliberate destruction of the other people capital base either as a reprisal, vengeance or as a means to get even politically or economically.  To develop a virile transit economics, economic resources must be made equally available to all those who can employ them for effective productivity.  Using economic resources as party patronage or for fighting religious ideologies should stop. 6.        Giving each generation a fair start in the economic race – The poorest sector in Africa are the youths.  Most youth just do not have anyone to cater for them.  The governments have no policy to productively engage the youth.  School curriculum planners hardly see the necessity for young students to earn any income in their spare time.  The spare time are most of the time wasted or spent in crime related activities.  The institution of higher learning should create jobs within the campus through which students could earn supplementary incomes, and master job related skills. I have said somewhere that if our youths do not spill their sweats they will spill their blood. 7.        Government should invest in the people – The satisfactory performance of a government should be measured by how much they invest in the people. Must we say that every free-born child receives equal opportunity to governmental care up till a certain age and then share with the parents of those who are disabled at a predefined percentage until a certain age will be reached when the individual, the public, and if possible his or her parents may combine together to develop the total person for the utmost good of the society? Our greatness is not in the wealth that we accumulate but in how economically morally minded our people are. 8.        Rogue’s Mentality – A rogue may be wealthy, buoyant and living in affluence, but in terms of real development he worth next to nothing. The African economic in transit should find a way to eradicate rogue’ s trading, rogue’s governance, etc.  A rogue is a rogue.  No nation of bunch of rogues can boast of true development. Rationale Nearly all classical economic theories have failed to work in Africa at both micro and macro levels, as well as at the planned or free market systems. Some of the reasons responsible for this situation had been analyzed above, but other causes are incompatible worldviews of the Africans because of differences in religions, cultures and ethnic groupings, inordinate ambitions, poor infrastructure and poor business acumen.  An old definition of economics is “the management of a household.”  Countries of Africa do not see themselves as a household and as such there is no defined social glue that binds the people together in body, soul and spirit.  Capitalism works for the United States and the Western world because there is social glue reinforced by the voluntary will of the people to associate together under the constitutional respect for the rule of law.  Similarly, the erstwhile Soviet Union was bound together by the principles of communism, where the leaders planned the economy and allocates resources.  In each of these cases, morality plays an extensive role.  A strong rationale for this course therefore is the reconstruction of social morals that will enhance the promotion of economic standards. What these social morals will entail would have to be spelled out to make them tangible enough for everyone to recognize and understand them.   Perceived unfair government policies had also contributed to economic violence in Africa.  The course will also address these issues.  Middlemen, distributors, and even government apparatuses, appear not to realize the need to develop the sources from which goods and services are generated.  There is hardly any government policy in place or implemented towards assisting small scale industrialists and farmers to avoid bad businesses or overcome bad times.  No poverty prevention schemes are designed for the poor of the society.  Instead government continued to increase and escalate costs of its services to the people, thus causing payments for such services to increase astronomically without compensating in quality of service or possibility of increasing the income of the users of government goods and services.  Because of fraud and government incompetence, the citizens are forced to pay higher taxes directly and indirectly.  Where the true value of a service to the community is $100 and the people spend $1000 to receive that service, both the people and the government are paying double economic rents: first to the criminals and second to the crimes that cause economic drain of the scarce resources. Aim The aim of this course is to introduce the student to a new economic thinking with a view to develop a new awareness for the importance of social morality as a pillar of economic survival.  This course will help the student to see how proper economic planning and judicious implementation of economic policies coupled with perceived fairness in the distribution of resources can reduce or eliminate societal violence including witless wars. This course will encourage the creation of a new society of knowledge who will use their education for the advancement of their respective communities and not for their destruction. A society can be said to be knowledgeable if they do not repeat their mistakes over and over again.  But in a situation where a society continues to repeat the same errors, especially economic ones, that society is lacking in knowledge, no matter how highly educated.  It is the expectation of this course that student will become sufficiently equipped to engage in sensible dialogue over economic issues and use their acquired knowledge of economics of peace to promote the wellbeing of the people in their communities. Objectives The objectives of this course will include, but not limited to: -        Explain the connections between Economics, Ecology, and Ecumenism. Sallie McFague in her book Life Abundant explained that the root of these three words is the Greek oikos which means house. Engaging the old meaning of economics as the “management of a household” to explain why these three concepts must be fully understood in order to promote community peace. -        Survey the various economic systems and their essential tasks of allocation, production, organization, and distribution. Emphasize the need for all economic systems to perform the tasks of allocation, production, and organization of resources in some fashions consistent with values and social pattern of their societies. The economic system must have a structure and this will depend on the worldview of the particular society being studied. -        Prepare a layout or sketches of economic relationships that we wish to propose for the achievement of economic justice in order to sustain peace and love and progress.  By taking into consideration the nature of the African economic world that we want to infiltrate, it is necessary to understand how major sectors of the African communities value these economic relationships among the contending sectors: families, multi-religions, multi-ethnic, secular and religious societies, planned and free markets, and government contributions. -        Investigate how economics weaves together the fabrics of the society and how this can be used to generate effective interaction among the people.  Substantiate these by teaching intuitively what economics is all about, and how the free market was suppose to solve economics problems when people apply the right sense of values properly prioritized and guided by proven religious injunctions. -        Introduce the students to measures such as discretionary fiscal policies – i.e. the deliberate use of changes in government spending or taxes to alter aggregate demand stabilize the economy ; and monetary policies for personal securities and full employment factors.  Highlight their checks and balances by laying emphasis on the human factors why these effective economic measures have failed to work for Africa.   Recommend ways and means how wastes generated by these policies and other budgetary processes can be curtailed. -        Formulate a model of a transit economics particularly designed for the African situation.  Some aspects of this transit economics have been analyzed above.  This model will be taught to the students with a view to brainstorm among the youth for a new economic emancipation. To sustain this transit economics, universities, business and technical schools will be encouraged to design, develop and package small scale businesses that two or three people or family members, friends, or religious organizations can own and operate. Some ideals would also have to be taught to achieve the success of a transit economics.  Ideals such as         scaling down wants to make the gap between wants and resources smaller         moving toward a simple lifestyle norm that would make minimal resources use socially desirable         improving per capita income through full employment         improving production process         Government been accountable, responsibly, and reliable, by subsidizing cost of production and assisting in distribution of end products to minimize waste.         Discovering more resources and processing them more effectively         Developing the best way to get goods and services to their best uses in consumption         Encouraging retailers and consumers to reward production adequately for survival, continuity and growth         All the arms of government doing their work to create an enabling environment for economic development         For further ideas about the transit economics will be developed as an Appendage to this thesis at a later date. -        Identify when an economic system is doing its job by studying how it is allocating scarce resources to ends meet by meeting them to serve the people. This will also involve the examination of how the system organizes its surpluses.  Are they re-invested, consumed or allow to waste? -        Examine the characteristics of modernism, postmodernism, capitalism, socialism, communism, etc. and the effect they have on economic growth in their domain or places of origin and compare their remote, direct and indirect on economics in Africa. -        Decide who gets what and the criteria in linking allocation and production through the forces of supply and demand:         first come first served         need basis         equal treatment         reward and merit         cronyism         open conflict         auction or market price -        Analyze the motivations and incentives for productivity         material factors, material sufficiency,         social and psychological benefit, self-actualization, social interactions         political pressure, desire to serve others -        Help the student to understand how market cost is calculated for business investment decisions. Explain some financial management terminologies such as economic returns, IRR, MPV, WACC, and economic terminologies such as GDP, GNP, etc. -        Explain tangible and intangible factors in economy and how these lead to wealth generation.  Explain the importance of choice and why it is important for citizen to have freedom in choices of income generation and consumption by orchestrating what their values and priorities are. -        Explain the importance of assigning value to all activities be it schooling, receiving training, and even domestic work and church work.  Emphasize the need to commission young people in productive occupations.  If the government can enlist children soldiers, nothing should stop African children from being engaged in productive activities as long as adequate safety measures are put in place. -        Examine the requirements for market success such as         clear definition of property rights         voluntary and unrestrained exchange of goods, services and properties         seeking morally adjusted self-interest in whatever everyone is engaged in doing -        Discuss the three types of self-interest as mentioned in your opening preamble:         The narrow self-interest         The benign self-interest         The just self-interest -        This course will appeal to the religious conscience of the students, especially by teaching biblical economic values of work, pleasure and gain.  Vices that are categorically unbiblical will be highlighted and virtues that can promote the overall wellbeing of the communities will be accentuated. Audience This course will be regarded as one of the foundational courses in the structured peace education program.  This course will also serve as a pre-requisite for one or two other courses to be decided as the entire curriculum evolve.  Therefore, it shall be a 101 level course and freshmen will be expected to take it in their first year at the academy. Teaching Approach The person who will be expected to teach this course will be versed not only in African economics, but also in socio-religious and cultural ways of life of Africans and how these affect their worldviews.  Since this is not a basic economics course, the instructor would be expected to understand the theology of economics as taught both in Christianity and Islamic Religions.  The reason for this is to enable the instructor to present a balanced view of economics as taught by these religions.  The instructor would also be expected to be someone who believes that a good and fair economic policy can lead to societal peace.  He or she should be able to design a fashionable transit economic model for Africa. Learning Resources Several authors on economics will be studied, few of whom are mentioned below: 1.        James Halteman.  The Clashing Worlds of Economics and Faith. Herald Press, 1995. 2.        Ronald J. Sider. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.  W. Publishing Group, United States, 1997. 3.        Tom H. Hastings.  Ecology of War and Peace – Counting Costs of Conflict. University Press of America, Inc., Maryland, 2000. 4.        Deryke Belshaw, Editor. Faith in Development – Partnership between the World Bank and the Churches of Africa. Regnum Books International, UK, 2001. 5.        Daniel S. Schipani. Religious Education Encounters Liberation Theology.  Religious Education Press, Alabama, 1988. 6.        Irvin Tucker. Micro Economics for Today. Thomson South-Western, USA, Third Edition 2003. 7.        Various journals on economics issues, e.g. The Economics, AfricaFocus Internet Postings, etc. 8.        Extensive interaction with various websites on issues relating to African economic situation.