Need For Quality Research To Equip The Church In Africa

On the 9th December 2022, the AEA General Secretary, Rev. Dr Master Matlhaope, paid a courtesy call to the Vice Chancellor of Daystar University, Prof. Laban Peter Ayiro, a celebrated Kenyan Professor of Research Methods and Statistics, at the Nairobi Campus Office. Daystar University is a Christ-centred, multi-denominational institution of higher learning which equips servant leaders through the integration of faith and learning for transformational servant leadership and is a member of the AEA.
AEA and Daystar University hold shared values in the critical need to utilize research-based tools to explore, improve and offer effective interventions to complex concepts such as inter-faith interactions and negative social phenomena affecting communities, such as corruption, poverty, and theological ineptness.

Dr Matlhaope highlighted the ongoing AEA project set to establish a modern, state-of-the-art, fully-equipped Resource and Research Centre on the 9th floor of the AEA Plaza. The RRC will improve access to information by providing stock books authored by Africans, research materials, patents, periodicals (magazines, newsletters and newspapers) for news and AEA publications, audio and visual literature for research use, a studio and a training facility. Prof. Ayiero noted that the possible collaboration areas include equipping the African church, and other institutions, including governments through research, to contribute to the democratization of their countries. “There is, for example, a great need to investigate equity in church programs to address the role of women in church leadership and issues to do with mental health among the Clergy, especially in this post covid era”, Prof. Ayiro pointed out.

Prof. Ayiro is a research enthusiast and was the 7th Kenyan to receive the Utumishi Bora Award. The Kenya Christian Professional Forum (KCPF) conferred the research and distinguished leadership award due to his exemplary work in Research and exemplified leadership for the past 40 years aimed at improving people’s lives in the community and society at large. AEA looks forward to a vibrant and resourceful partnership with the Daystar University fraternity in unifying Evangelicals, improving our motherland’s spiritual, social and economic development, and achieving AEA’s long-term vision of “The Africa God Wants”.