There is lots of talk about Africa at InsideWork this year. Jim Hancock started 2008 working on a digital movie project in Tanzania; in July, Geoff Finch represented InsideWork in meetings with government ministries of central and East African nations; and we have a pleasant correspondence with a business consultant (and InsideWork reader) in Nairobi.

I have to say this is a cautiously hopeful turn in a conversation I have been part of for more than a quarter of a century.

When I first went to Africa on behalf of World Vision in the 1980s, every statement about Africa included a warning that the continent was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. We certainly were not wrong about that — for reasons that were obvious to most any observer at the time and for ominous reasons yet to be revealed in the beginnings of the spread of HIV.

Through the 80s and 90s, African nations were overwhelmed by health crises and drought-caused famine, embroiled in ethnic and religious wars and genocide, hobbled by the lack of focused and meaningful education, the absence of global markets for African products and services, impoverished by national debt and the emptying of national treasuries by thieves and fools.

In many instances, help from the outside has taken the form of regrettable handouts (as Geoff Finch’s post, Does Africa Matter?, makes plain). But that is not the only story playing in Africa today. There is development work, cooperation and investment that hints at the possibility of sustainable growth.

There is development work, cooperation and investment that hints at the possibility of sustainable growth.

South Africa accomplished a peaceful change of government against all odds. Following the horrific genocide in Rwanda, that nation’s citizens are pulling their country together into the future. In this calendar year, Kenya averted a nightmare scenario by forging a power-sharing agreement. Right now, though the odds seem long following a stolen election, Zimbabweans are struggling to rid themselves of the gang of oligarchs holding onto power through intimidation and murder against their own citizens. In Sudan, where the odds seem equally long, the president may be brought down by charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, paving the way for an end to the violence in the Darfur region.

We hope people who identify themselves with Jesus will be emboldened to ask God — specifically — to remove the remaining despots and the corrupt bands of thugs and criminals that surround them. We hope Christian citizens in Africa will become pacifist/activists who say, “Enough is enough,” and refuse to be complicit in the oppression of their neighbors. We hope generous individuals and donor nations around the world will put a stop to funding that merely props up decrepit leaders.

I am convinced we need to push for investment and development partnerships that create value in the form of sustainable business activities that produce jobs and economic opportunity for every citizen. We hope friends from outside Africa will join those inside to assist African nations in developing educational systems that mimic the successful practices of education in India and China — placing a high value on engineering and other specialties on which sustainable enterprise can build — developing students who will be prepared to change the entrepreneurial climate in their countries and the whole continent.

We hope outside entrepreneurs and companies will move into Africa to build robust indigenous companies that produce decent jobs and fair wages to stimulate emerging economies. We hope African entrepreneurs will create and produce products and services that are valued around the world and we hope economic blockades against Africa will be torn down in Europe, Asia and the Americas. We hope people who call themselves Christians will pray and work together toward all these ends.

Africa is home to some of the most sensitive, sweet and godly people I know in the world. They have suffered immeasurably . . . and all of our past “Band-Aids” have had too little impact at too great a price. We need new thinking — and sustained action — and we need it now.