Reflections on the Care Economies of Africa

In Reflections on the Care Economies of Africa, Akosua Darkwah analyzes the state of care economies across the African continent. She points to the structural factors that produce widespread challenges for African caregivers, especially women in rural areas, and labels the approach to care under neoliberalism as being systematically “care-less.” She envisions a “care-sensitive” approach — in which African states take responsibility for providing decent employment in the care economy, as well as closing critical infrastructure gaps — that can enable African caregivers to live life to its fullest.

This report was produced by the Nawi Collective, a Care Economies in Context project partner.

Citation

Darkwah, A. (2023). Reflections on the Care Economies of Africa. https://drive.google.com/file/d/14-JQWixqs3BThq-MmIF3dmX7Dqd5eSwr/view?usp=drive_link

Abstract

Africa’s care needs are unique. Granted, women around the world bear an undue
burden of care, but African women are in a league of their own in this respect for
several reasons.

First, Africa is largely an agrarian society with women contributing half of the labour force in this sector. Ossome and Naidu (2021) in discussing agrarian communities in Africa and Asia, note that women’s labour is central to production, albeit production which is outside the capitalist production system. Indeed, women’s labour in these communities is directly exploited to ensure the very sustenance of the agrarian classes. As they point out, this labour is crucial to the sustenance of not just workers, but life itself. Ossome and Naidu (2021) bring a global South perspective to the discussion on care by highlighting its crucial importance.

Secondly, the continent has the world’s highest fertility rate of 4.4 live births per woman, which is almost twice the global average of 2.39 (Valiani 2022: 11), nearly two and a half times higher than the rates for Latin America and the Caribbean (1.9) as well as Asia (1.9) and almost thrice the rate for Europe (1.5).1 This means that on average, a woman on the African continent has to devote twice as much time as her compatriots around the world to the physical act of nurturing a baby inside her womb and then caring for the baby once it is born. As elsewhere, this has implications for whether women will engage in income-generating activities or not.