Biography as history in explication of African Christianity a reflection in appreciation of Professor Jonathan Bonk

The Dictionary of African Christian Biography (DACB) received its official Africa launch when Founder Professor Jonathan Bonk made his first DACB-related trip to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in February 1999. The DACB has become a unique initiative that focuses on compiling and publishing biographies of pioneer African Christians throughout this continent. The name emphasizes the primary and fundamental role of Africans in the process of rooting the Christian faith in the African cultural soil. It is an awkward reality that the history of Christianity in Africa is documented in Western scholarship as the initiative of European and American missionaries despite the fact that they owe their success to the work of the African catechists and other African personnel who feature only peripherally or not at all in missionary historiography. As founder and promoter of the DACB, Bonk has devoted much of his time, effort and resources to nurturing this insightful project.