AfroCathonomics: Challenging the African Poverty Context with the Christian/Maritainian Personalism and the Theology of Preferential Option for the Poor

This research is framed around five questions. The questions are: What is poverty? Why is Africa so poor? Who are the victims of poverty and who is a person? How do we recover the full personhood of the poor? How do we translate the theology on the recovery of the full personhood of the poor to social policy?

With the framing of the first and second questions, it is obvious that the interest of this research is poverty, and its context is Africa. However, the framing of the third question is not quite expressive about the field of the research. The type of personhood that interests this research is philosophical and theological, that is, philosophical and Christian personalism. As such, this research is a project in philosophy and theology of the person. The fourth question shows that this project will transition from describing the person to proposing the theology that recovers the full person hood of the poor. It implies that this project understands poverty as that which undermines the person of the poor. And the fifth question captures the intent of this project - to transition theology into social policy on poverty.