OPS 20. Churches and Organisational Development in Africa

Churches have played a major role in the implementation of relief and development work in Africa over the last four decades. However, there are concerns that the church development programmes have not been achieving their objectives for impact. To some extent, it has become apparent that the internal organisation and management weaknesses of church and development structures have contributed to these performance shortfalls.

The aim of this paper is to deepen the understanding of staff from European Church-related development NGOs (especially CIDSE and APRODEV members) of the emerging practice of OD with traditional church ‘partners’ and so challenge them to improve their support of such interventions and also consciously grapple with some of the difficult questions and dilemmas that still remain.