Bishop Josiah Kibira: Forty Years After Graduation
The 2014 commenement of Boston University marks the 40th anniversary of the graduation of one of the School of Theology’s most important African graduates: the late Bishop Josiah Mutabuzi Kibira. Josiah Kibira graduated with an S.T.M. from the School of Theology in 1964. A pioneering local and international leader, Josiah Kibira became the first African to be elected bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Buhaya, Tanzania. He served in the World Council of Churches, and was the keynote speaker at the All Africa Conference of Churches General Assembly held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Bishop Kibira was also the first African to be elected president of the Lutheran World Federation. The memory of Bishop Kibira’s leadership is marked by the establishment in 2010 of an institution of higher education in his name, the Josiah Kibira University College in Bukoba, Tanzania. His son, Josiah Mwesigwa Kibira, is an established director and screenwriter, who in 2010 released a documentary about his father, Bishop Kibira of Bukoba: An African Lutheran. For a fuller account of Bishop Kibira’s life and service, see his biography on the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, and the History of Missiology.