ABSTRACT
Ageing is an inevitable part of life. Culturally, different communities vary in their attitudes to older people. Africans generally respect their elders as people who have become knowledgeable and wise through their life course. In hierarchical terms, older people are placed at the top of the ‘tree’. In Africa south of the Sahara, life expectancy is much lower than it is in the West, therefore the numbers of people reaching the age of sixtyfive and over is estimated to be around 6 per cent. However, this population is projected to increase to 12 per cent by year 2025. This increase will present some challenges for families because they provide social security to their older members. Traditionally older people formed an integral part of the fabric of societies across Africa. They played an important role in harmonizing relations when disruptions occurred due to poverty, war and conflict. The complex extended family system has been helpful in enabling effective intergeneration care. Each member within extended family systems, including older members, not only receives, but gives care and advice in return. Under such arrangements older people do not feel redundant or excluded. However, the emerging reality is that Africa is changing with an accelerated pace of urbanization. It is projected that 50 per cent of the African population will be living in towns and cities by year 2020 (Harden 1991). The predictions will divide families into two camps, urban young and rural old. Opinions differ on the sustainability of the extended family system as a force for social security in old age as the following statement illustrates: ‘young people, having attended school and secured jobs in cities, find less and less value in the authority, knowledge, and skills of their elders’ (Harden 1991:68). However, others consider the isolation of older people in rural Africa as alarmist. Apt (2002) suggests that the emotional ties and
economic support among family members remain relatively strong and this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Industrialization taking place in Africa is affecting the traditional care systems organized around the family resulting in possible reduction in harmonious existence, young people seek paid work away from their rural environments and cost implications of maintaining urban and rural homes on limited income. Poverty is a major concern, particularly among widows (Owen 1996). Marriage patterns, with specific reference to polygamy, expose widows to real hardship and marginalization. To reduce the levels of poverty and lack of employment opportunities, international migration in search of employment and better prospects has been a significant feature among Africans since the 1980s. International migration and loss of sons to war and HIV/ AIDS has meant that older relations are left behind without money or the traditional support network. Some of the widows have faired well through international migration to the West and have been able to send remittances back home meeting their obligations towards their older relatives dependent on them for welfare. The inevitability of ageing is catching up with the African migrants who came to the UK perhaps with a view to make their fortune then return to their country of origin. The reality is that the majority have not managed to save any money let alone accumulating a financial fortune, and are now facing the prospect of growing old in the UK, and are considering their retirement. Can they afford to retire? Will the financial poverty they left in Africa catch up with them? Where is the final resting place when they die? These are some of the questions to which African older people are likely to want to find answers. Social care workers who come into contact with African older people could have a dialogue based on these questions with a view to working with them towards identifying solutions. Literature on ethnicity and old age is limited for obvious reasons of comparative youth. Minority adults who came to the UK during the 1960s and 1970s are now senior citizens and, as such, there are signs that ethnicity will be taken into account in future social policy research on old age. Research studies that are shaping the knowledge base on ageing and social care have confirmed some similarity as well as differences, for example on issues of informal care.
