The long wait for a Kiswahili edition of the Africa Bible Commentary (ABC) is nearly over for the language's nearly 90 million speakers.

Kiswahili is spoken in several African countries and is a national or official language of four nations. It is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.

With such a high number of Kiswahili speakers, and a church that has been growing in numbers at an exceptionally high rate, the Kiswahili ABC has been developed to equip pastors, Bible students, and ordinary Christians to study God's Word in their language, using a tool fitted to African context.

There is great anticipation of the arrival of the commentary in late June as encapsulated by the words of one of the reviewers: "I was fortunate to have been allocated some of the books I teach at the seminary to review. I confess that during the readings, I felt a strong urge to call all my former students back and make a big apology, and then re-teach the books afresh using these new insights, so relevant and contextual. Why did it take so long to have such an invaluable resource in our language?"

The Kiswahili edition of the ABC is an initiative of the ABC Editorial Board and Langham Partnership International, and has been developed over a period of nearly three years.

"Our prayer is that just as God used His word to ignite the fire of Reformation in Europe in the sixteenth century, he will use the ABC to do the same in Africa today," said Dr Tokunboh Adeyemo, General Editor, ABC.

On the web: www.langhampartnership.org/lpuki