An Assessment of ACIP, an African Christian Character Virtues Programme

The African Christian Initiation Programme (ACIP) is a Character Virtues Development programme for adolescents that was founded in 2004. The founders of the programme seek to fill a cultural void created by the erosion of indigenous African rites of passage by modernisation.

Today, identity and belonging are visibly riddled with tensions between the ethnic and the national, attributed to the disruption of traditional ethnic beliefs, rituals and practices occasioned first by colonization and then through the influence of western civilization and its perception that local ways are backward. The challenges of urbanization, the explosion of information technology and the attendant dramatic cultural and economic changes further complicate the scenario. The resultant effect of this confusion between traditional customs and western models of adolescents is youth vulnerability to high-risk behaviour, which can lead to life-threatening challenges such as HIV infection, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, and drug abuse  without the necessary tools to face adulthood.

This present study assessing the African Christian Initiation Program (ACIP) is built on the knowledge that initiation played a major role in African communities. It incorporates the old knowledge with the modern context and it shows that the transmission cannot be left to one institution but that parents, teachers and young people have to work together. The programme borrows character virtues from the indigenous African way of life and from faith-based practices to provide adolescents with information and life skills that assist with building their character for the effective transition from childhood to responsible adulthood. ​