Author(s)

Ani Casimir, Chukwuelobe Mathew, Ambrose Nwankwo

Department of Philosophy, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria.

Social scientists studying African development have found themselves in a “paradigmatic crisis” (Ake, 2003: p. 17) in recent years, especially in the face of new challenges of development arising from the millenium development goals adopted by the United Nations. They have often posed the question—How can African development benefit from the MDGS, so that the African poor can attain the goals before 2015? This crisis needs to be properly contextualized so as to understand the dilemma facing the African poor in the new millenium. For example, at the end of the day, we should be in a position to know the answers to such questions such as “who defines what is development in africa; what is under development; how do we develop ourselves; Who develops; who benefits from development and how do we measure development?” The Catholic Social Teachings have a recognized and documented role in alleviating the socio-economic and political development challenges facing the people. It was part of the thoeritical framework of this paper that the best strategy of incorporating the needs of the family is for the state to partner with the state to answer the challenges of development in Africa but also to embark upon practicable Family economic empowerment development strategy. But government in Nigeria fails to take this partnership seriously but came out with NEEDS—National economic empowerment development strategy; SEEDS—State economic empowerent development strategy; and LEEDS-Local government economic empowerment development strategy. In designing these development documents government solidly avoided the involvment of the church which is pro-people and pro-poor institution that had been committed to development concerns as part of its christian mandate. This paper, using the Catholic development chain model will seek to explain how the Church can increase the pro-people impact of its development programs, to reduce poverty in Africa. To solve this dilemma, the paper introduces a new concept of Faith-based vehicles (FBVS) as the modem that will drive this partnership in development.

NGOS, FBOS, FBVS, Poverty Reduction, NEEDS, SEEDS, LEEDS, FEEDS, Philosophy and Theory of Development

Casimir, A. , Mathew, C. and Nwankwo, A. (2015) Partnership between the State and the Church: Contextualizing Nigerian Faith-Based Vehicles as Poverty Reduction Tools in the Millenium. Open Journal of Political Science, 5, 58-67. doi: 10.4236/ojps.2015.52006.