Two formal declarations, a Women’s Day Declaration, and a new international structure with regional representatives: those are the concrete outputs carried out of the Africa and African Diaspora Conference, convened under the theme “The Return to Africa.” The World Council of Churches describes the effort as a “walk of faith” that will keep going.
The conference was built as a working assembly, not a ceremonial one. Rev. Dr Walker-Smith and Rev. Frank Chikane, former moderator of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, co-organized the gathering with support from an International Committee drawing representatives from the world’s regions, alongside a South African-based Host Committee. The delegated assembly made room for dialogue, affirmation of faith, strategic policy formation, and community-led action.
Execution reflected deliberate prioritization. Organizers delivered a Women’s Day Declaration after responding to conditions observed ahead of the event. “We saw the increasing conditions around femicide and gender-based violence and we could not go without a pre-women’s conference,” said Walker-Smith. “We made it a priority.”
The programme ran on a series of keynotes. Speakers included Right Rev. Lydia Nesahngwe, first woman president of the All-Africa Conference of Churches, who presented on “Africa Intelligence”; His Holiness Most Rev. Dr. Rufus Okikiola Ostelu, WCC president from Africa; WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Jerry Pillay; former Liberian president Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first elected woman president of an African nation; former South African president His Excellency Thabo Mbeki; former Haitian president His Excellency Jean Bertrand Aristide; and Bishop Sithembele Sipuka of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mthatha, president of the South African Council of Churches.
The stated purpose was a partnership platform advancing African sovereignty unified with African Diaspora self-determination, reparatory justice, and sustainable solidarity between Africa, its global diaspora, and the world. Making that work in practice meant reaching beyond elites. “This was about getting grassroots people from the diaspora globally and Africans on the continent,” Chikane said. “We wanted to be able to get people to organize themselves, engage with each other, learn from each other.”
The delivery showed up in the delegates’ own experiences. Chikane recalled meeting the Brazil delegation, some of whom set foot on the continent for the first time. “They shed tears,” he said. “One of them said: ‘I now feel complete. I have been feeling that I was not complete.’” He called the event a therapeutic space for people to talk about the erasing of their history. “It was a therapeutic experience,” he said. “The event became a living event among those who were captured, enslaved, and taken to colonized foreign lands as they met with their siblings who remained in the continent and colonized.”
Walker-Smith framed the symbolic core similarly. “Indeed, a number of those from the diaspora came through the ‘Doors of No Return’ which they turned into ‘Doors of Return,’” she said. She also commended the strong presence of young people, calling it a new phase of the work. “We’re walking into a whole new era of Pan-Africanism with all and for all,” she said. “We understand this is a vision for the world.”
What happens next has been settled, at least organizationally. Alongside the two declarations, the conference decided to create an international structure with representatives from each region to carry the vision forward. “Nobody came out the same,” Chikane said. “We want this vision to turn into a movement to mobilize people of African descent on the ground globally, and Africans on the African continent,” he said. “People of African descent and Africans must come together with Indigenous people to reverse damage inflicted by the enslavers’ takers and colonizers.”
Whether the gathering translates into sustained delivery now rests with that new structure and its regional representatives, tasked with turning a conference’s outputs into an ongoing movement.