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SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

In Africa south of the Sahara, many older persons (especially women) are illiterate and do not know their birthdate or chronological age. African cultural definitions of old age usually are functional: people are ‘‘old’’ when they lose their strength, and also, for women, when they no longer menstruate or give birth to children. The United Nations defines older persons as those age sixty and over (sixty-plus) though Africans themselves may use different criteria, and people much younger than sixty may consider themselves old.

In a world that is growing older, less-developed countries are aging more slowly than industrial nations, with Africa aging more slowly than any other region. In developed nations, including Europe, Japan, and the United States, the proportion of those age sixty-plus was in the range of 15 to 22 percent in the year 2000, and is expected to reach 25 percent or more in some countries by the year 2025. By contrast, the proportion of those age sixty-plus in most African nations was under 5 percent in the year 2000, and will reach a modest 6 percent by the year 2025. Sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, had a total population of 110 million in 1998, over 5 million (5.2 percent) of whom were age sixty-plus. In the region as a whole, in 2000, there were 32 million older Africans; by 2025 there will be 75 million.

In the year 2000, about two-thirds of older Africans lived in rural areas, where most older people will probably continue to live well into the twenty-first century. Rural areas have weak social services, poor infrastructure, few opportunities to generate income, and heavy out-migration of younger adults seeking employment. This outmigration has serious consequences for older individuals, including loss of male labor on family farms, increased workloads for women and elders, more female-headed households, economic interdependence of migrants and rural family members, disruptions in family relationships, families with households in both rural homelands and urban workplaces, and difficulties of children in meeting filial obligations to aging parents. Nevertheless, most older Africans, in both rural and urban settings, live with family members, usually spouses, children and/or grandchildren, often in multigenerational households. Many of the 3 to 5 percent who live alone probably have kin nearby.

The economic situation of older Africans

Though poverty was not unknown in pre-colonial Africa, it seems to have been limited mainly to persons of low social status—slaves, persons of low caste, or, sometimes, widows. Older men controlled most strategic resources, including access to housing, land, and livestock. Older women controlled food, and elders of both genders controlled the labor and reproduction of younger persons and intangible assets such as utilitarian knowledge and ritual power. In this gerontocratic system, it seems likely that most older persons in need were adequately cared for—though in fact this is an open question, as little research has addressed the issue.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Africans experienced conquest, colonial rule, incorporation of formerly self-sufficient economies into the world political economy, and the material impoverishment of Africa and Africans. Details of these transformations varied locally, but everywhere they have put pressures on African families and made the lives of many—young and old—precarious. In addition, Africans suffer from repressive dictatorships and military regimes, corruption, widespread conflict, violence, civil wars, recurrent droughts, livestock epidemics, famines, endemic malnutrition, infectious diseases, high unemployment, and very deep poverty. In 2000, Africa had about ten million refugees and internally displaced persons, including unknown numbers of older persons. By 2000, about 34 million Africans had been infected by HIV/AIDS—in that year, 2 million of them died. The economic and social impacts of the AIDS pandemic are many, including care by older persons of their dying adult children—followed by care of orphaned grandchildren—and elders left without family support. Perhaps the single worst condition affecting Africans is poverty, which affects the great majority of Africans of all ages (and African governments as well). Money would not end political repression or war, but it could alleviate many other problems.

Because of the slow pace of economic development in Africa, opportunities for formal employment are modest, with men favored in the formal economy. Men without wage employment, and most women, earn money in the informal economy, through petty trading, making and selling craft items, and various micro-enterprises. In rural areas, cash crops provide income, but scarce land and/or labor may reduce the production of subsistence crops. In sub-Saharan Africa, women do the major part of agricultural labor. Much other work is carried out almost entirely by women and children, including fetching wood and water, cooking, laundry, housecleaning, childcare, and caregiving of sick and elderly family members. All these activities are continued as long as possible, with elders thus making substantial social and economic contributions to their families.

Most older people live in rural areas and continue working as long as they are able, retiring only when forced by frailty. For those few in formal employment, mandatory retirement age is as low as fifty in some African countries. Pensions—usually inadequate and often in the form of a single lump sum—are available to very small proportions (under 10 percent) of workers, except in Namibia and South Africa, which have comprehensive, noncontributory old-age pensions. Many retirees return to their rural homes and become involved again in the rural subsistence economy.

Older Africans in urban areas, like their rural counterparts, are likely to be poor, to participate in income-generating and maintenance activities as long as they can, live with family members, and receive assistance from relatives. Their access to health care and other services is slightly better, though they are unlikely to grow food crops. Those who are foreign nationals, coming as labor migrants or refugees, may be cut off from their families. Some older persons, especially widows without land rights, may migrate to urban areas to live with children, and large cities may attract older beggars, especially widows, who have fallen through the family support network (though even some beggars receive family support).

The social situation of older Africans

Respect is a core cultural value in sub-Saharan Africa. Indigenous ideologies strongly affirm the respect due those older than oneself, especially elders nearing death and ancestorhood. Respect is shown through obedience, deferential behavior, and participation in reciprocal exchanges of goods and labor among kin. Parents should care for children properly, and children should reciprocate by providing support and care for parents—not just when parents became frail, but all their lives. Elders should be social guides for younger generations.

In Africa in the early twenty-first century, respect remains a strong cultural value, and families are deeply concerned for their older members. However, the ability of families to provide has diminished as a consequence of widespread poverty, labor migration, and having to make hard choices between the competing needs of children and aging parents. Furthermore, in the twentieth century, elders lost much control over strategic resources, as younger adults (especially men) pursued options in the new economic and political orders where wealth, prestige, and power did not depend on elders. The formal educational system and new technologies and information undermined the importance of elders’ knowledge and diminished their roles as social guides. As the economic and cultural bases of elders’ prestige and power declined, elders’ status and influence declined in various ways, though not uniformly nor entirely. Many elders are still given respect, though it may sometimes be superficial: they may not be consulted for their advice nor receive family support—and even when received, support may be inadequate.

The central issues in African aging revolve around families, intergenerational relations, and whether modern African families provide adequate support and care to older members. Is the African family falling apart, disintegrating, or disappearing? Or is it changing and adapting to modern conditions? Much research indicates that many elderly Africans, perhaps even a majority, receive substantial assistance from their families, especially spouses, children, and grandchildren. Other research questions the universality of these findings. In any case, inadequate support is not surprising, given Africa’s widespread poverty.

Vulnerable elders

African elders vary along many dimensions in their vulnerability to risk, including rural or urban residence; embeddedness in family; gender; health; access to resources; and local political and economic conditions. Underlying many problems is Africa’s deep poverty—poverty exacerbated by natural disasters and human violence that affect everyone, especially children and older persons lacking the resilience and strength to cope. The resulting poverty of old age is worse for women, because lifelong discrimination in educational and employment opportunities, property rights, nutrition, and other aspects of life brings them to old age with thinner resources than men. Widows (the majority of older women) sometimes encounter further difficulties if their husband’s family seizes their property and abandons them.

Since most older Africans depend on children for support and care, childless elders are especially at risk, with women a little more likely than men to be childless (polygamy gives men more chances to have children). With sons commonly responsible for older parents, sonless elders may be no better off than childless persons—though, increasingly, daughters support parents.

As with older people everywhere, physical frailty, disabilities, illness, and malnutrition have serious consequences in terms of self-support versus the need for physical care. Institutional solutions, including long-term care, scarcely exist in Africa, except for persons of European descent, so frail African elders must depend on their families. Care is more uncertain for women, who are themselves the caregivers. The great majority of older men are cared for by wives, but women must depend on daughters, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren, if they are available. As Africa’s older population increases, there will be more frail elders, and fewer caregivers due to the combined effects of migration, AIDS, and rapidly declining birth rates.

Policy and practical implications

What can be done? Clearly, poverty must be alleviated, gender justice must be achieved, and solutions to African problems must take an indigenous approach. Family-oriented policies and community-based initiatives offer feasible alternatives to the prohibitive cost of state interventions and the infrastructural constraints of rural areas where most elders live. Action-oriented participatory research will empower older Africans as they express their needs and envision solutions based on African social and cultural strengths.

Families will no doubt remain the basic resource for elders (as is the case throughout the world). Hence, it makes sense to target families for services to older persons, for example, by strengthening the resources of women, the traditional caregivers. Programs supporting the productive activities of women and elders—such as literacy and vocational education, rural cooperatives, small-scale village industries, and small loans to fund microenterprises—would benefit all family members. Such interventions would expand the impact of existing self-help and mutual aid groups, such as rotating credit associations and work groups. More extensive rural development, including improved employment opportunities, technical support, and service infrastructure, could induce more younger people to remain in their rural homes and could also benefit older persons, both economically and by having their relatives near.

Limited resources for medically based health care in Africa have led to an emphasis on community-based primary health care. Locally trained community health workers could provide nutrition and preventive-care education for older persons, especially women, thus benefiting all family members, given the involvement of women in feeding and caring for family members. In addition, indigenous healing practices and medications need consideration, especially as many Africans consult local practitioners instead of, or in addition to, going to doctors and hospitals.

Finally, policies and laws (including African customary laws) aimed at achieving gender justice would break the cycles of discrimination against women in their rights to land, property, and their children—and in access to knowledge and legal advice. These cycles have made African women of all ages especially vulnerable to poverty and violence. As with other problems of African elders, solutions need to be aimed not solely at older people, but at improving the situation of women, families, and communities and achieving economic development for all. Such improvements will enable older people to continue their self-support and substantial contributions to their families, and will enable families to give their elders adequate support and care. The situation of Africa, and African elders, is grim but not hopeless. Africans are resilient, creative, hardworking people with many social and cultural resources to call upon in changing things for the better.

MARIA CATTELL

See also MIDDLE EASTERN COUNTRIES; POPULATION AGING; POVERTY.

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