A fundamental question must be asked as I begin this essay: What is Christian hope, and what relevance can it have in the reshaping of Africa’s unfolding future? Of the 2.65 billion Christians in the world, Africa has 754.23 million. It is currently the continent with the largest number of Christians. Before one celebrates, I am compelled to ask the following question, “Can Christian hope help to save Africa from the epidemic of poverty that has held the continent captive?” In 2025, “over 438 million people on the continent lived with less that 2.15 U.S. dollars per day.” Also, “globally, Africa is the continent hosting the highest poverty rate.”
Christian hope is grounded in a prophetic witness to alternative modes of being that orient one to a promise which is not alien to the human condition. In other words, it is God’s invitation to journey with God towards the gift of a new life, where the reign of God is saturated and human flourishing is assured. This journey exudes the content of hope while grounding itself within the promise that unfolds in abundance at the eschaton. To ensure that Christian hope is not an empty promise in the face of concrete realities defining the human condition, its content is both a guide and a gift that is experienced at every moment of the journey in the here and now of human social existence.
The content of Christian hope is belief in the resurrection of the body. This belief orients Christians to a fundamental consciousness, one that must probe deeper into the injustice of death that attempts to distract from the enduring gift of life that God bestows on creation. Thus, Christian hope understood as the gift of conviction of belief in God’s word demands that the one who embraces hope also embraces the summon to journey towards a robust knowledge of what constitutes the content of the gift itself. In other words, to believe in the resurrection of the body and to assume a new humanity in Christ demands that the believer make the relevant effort of taking seriously the concrete realities of the here and now. This demands an active and prophetic awareness and engagement with all that is defining the concrete context where the life of the hopeful Christian plays out.
But hope does not reside solely in the concrete. It has an eschatological turn which makes it a virtue that is trans-border. It invites the believer to embrace the divine promise of enduring life which serves as the source of Christian imagination of that which seeks to be birthed forth, and which brings with it the reign of God. Jürgen Moltmann notes this well when he argues for the intricate link between faith and hope and how the faith that is grounded in hope demands that believers do not embrace a utopian escape from the concrete realities of the day. Rather, they must actively work in addressing them (Moltmann, Theology of Hope,1993, p. 19). In a similar venture, Pope Benedict XVI grounds faith in hope. He argues that the faith of hope is a summon to embody authenticity. Since Jesus Christ is himself the source of Christian hope and the teacher of authenticity in the embrace of the human vocation in a world that is in need of transformation, believers in Christ do not just desire the content of Christian hope. Rather, the gift and the desire for it are a summon for one to be authentic and to rethink their place and role in the unjust systems that define human life in the concrete world. Stated differently, an embrace of Christian hope is also an embrace of a prophetic witness against the unjust systems in the world and a command to actively work to undo them in such a manner that it allows for the flourishing of all lives. This is because hope “indicates a lived hope, a life based on the certainty of hope. … It is the expectation of things to come from the perspective of a present that is already given. It is a looking-forward in Christ’s presence, with Christ who is present, to the perfecting of his Body, to his definitive coming” (Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 2007, #9).
The prophetic dimension of Christian hope demands that Christians become active agents of positive social transformation. As Moltmann notes, “the man who thus hopes will never be able to reconcile himself with the laws and constraints of this earth, neither with the inevitability of death nor with the evil that constantly bears further evil. The raising of Christ is not merely a consolation to him in a life that is full of distress and doomed to die, but it is also God’s contradiction of suffering and death, of humiliation and offence, and of the wickedness of evil. Hope finds in Christ not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering” (Moltmann, p. 21). If hope evokes an active protest against unjust structures that cause suffering in the world, then hope must evoke a deliberate awakening to a preferential option for justice and peace in the world. This point is stressed by Jean-Marc Ela. In his words, “Jesus announces the good news, starting with an option for the poor. He enters a world divided between rich and poor, masters and slaves, educated and uneducated, Gentiles and Jews. Deliberately, he takes his place among the poor and exploited” (Éla, My Faith as An African, 2009, p. 106). In other words, there is a social contract that Christian hope evokes in the hearts of Christians, one that orients Christians to take seriously their place in society to bring about a more just world. Consequently, neutrality in the face of injustice is not an option in the Christian life. This understanding of the prophetic character of Christian hope grounds both the content of hope itself and the active summon of Christians to embrace this gift within the communal. As Benedict XVI would argue, Christian hope “has to do with the building up of this world – in very different ways, according to the historical context and the possibilities offered or excluded thereby” (Benedict XVI, #15).
What are the implications of this understanding of Christian hope for Africa? Christian hope is a social virtue, and as such, its praxis must always be oriented towards the common good. This is why it demands a pneumatological reading of the signs of the times that allow for appropriate responses to the social issues that play out in each epoch of history (Benedict XVI, #25). In a colonized context like Africa where the vestiges of colonial trauma hold captive the collective imagination of its people, an embrace of Christian hope must do the following.
First, it demands that African Christians take seriously the pneumatological reading of the signs of the times. Taking seriously the historical grounding of the social ills plaguing the continent is a relevant place to begin this project. This approach ought to orient African Christians to embrace what Jon Sobrino calls the “two essential connotations inherent in a vision of the Kingdom of God. First, that God rules in his acts,” second, “that it [the Kingdom of God] exists in order to transform a bad and unjust historical-social reality into a different good and just one” (Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator, 1993, p. 71). In Africa, the realization of the Kingdom of God demands that African Christians become the face of God that ushers hope for all, especially for those who are victims of poverty.
Second, in the areas of economics, politics, and the rule of law in Africa, transparent economic policies that are defended by just laws ought to be the appropriate response. Politics ought not be defined by tribal affiliations that exclude women as well. Rather, national consciousness ought to be cultivated; all Africans, irrespective of gender, ought to be given the chance to contribute to nation building. Also, the rule of law ought to be sacrosanct in the continent. Anything else should be rejected. Before God, all humans are equal. This ought to be the vision driving social transformation pursued by African Christians for the continent.
Finally, Christian hope demands that an embrace of learning and knowledge defines the Christian way of life. To know God who gifts creation with the gift of life and invites all to live altruistically demands that one puts effort to the project of knowledge production. This type of knowledge acquisition is itself liberative because it rejects all forms of manipulative control of the mind. Similarly, in the context of Africa, an embrace of Christian hope means that African Christians ought to promote a culture of liberative knowledge production and acquisition. Where colonial education was intended to be exploitative and induce subservient attitudes towards social issues, an embrace of liberative education demands that knowledge acquisition and production ought to free the African psyche from coloniality of imagination. It ought to induce in Africans a desire to want to transform their societies and ways of being in such a manner that it brings about skill acquisitions that can be applied to address concrete problems facing the continent. This is most important if the continent is to address its current illiteracy crises; some of which are based on cultural biases against the education of girls and women.
References
Benedict XVI. Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi. November 30, 2007. https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html.
Dierks, Zeynep. “Forecast of the Total Population of Africa from 2020 to 2050.” Statista.com. January 26, 2026. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1224205/forecast-of-the-total-population-of-africa/.
Éla, Jean-Marc. My Faith as an African. Translated by John Pairman Brown and Susan Perry. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2009.
Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 1993.
Sobrino, Jon. Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth. Translated by Paul Burns and Francis McDonagh. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1993.
Zurlo, Gina A. Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing. “World Christianity 2025: Regional Perspectives.” International Bulletin of Mission Research. Volume 49. No. 1 (2025): 62 – 74. https://www.silkwavemission.com/e-letter/year_2025/e-news/02/zurlo-et-al-2024-world-christianity-2025-regional-perspectives.pdf.