In most cultures in Africa, when someone, especially an elderly person, dies, the funeral is often extravagant. Every adult family member is expected to contribute their time, money, and other resources to give the deceased a “befitting” burial. The funeral must be elaborate, even if they never cared for or looked after the person they are, in a manner of speaking, celebrating while he or she was alive.
When Tai Solarin lost his father, legend has it that he had an altercation with his family. They wanted a lavish funeral, but he thought it made no sense. “Just put the dead body in the ground,” Solarin reportedly told his relatives. In a culture where elaborate funerals are the norm, it isn’t every day you come across a non-conformist like Tai Solarin.
So, what can we infer from the culture of elaborate funerals in Africa? In How Funerals Keep Africa Poor, David Oks explains how African cultures typically spend a fortune burying their dead. This practice is common in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, DR Congo, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, and Cameroon, to name a few. In Ghana, for instance, a “befitting” funeral can cost somewhere between $5,000 and $20,000. Mind you, this is a country that has an annual median income of about $1,500, the author notes. One would think that such costly ceremonies would be the last thing a poor society like Ghana would prioritise because they have more pressing existential concerns.
The author argues that lavish funerals are not just about respect for elders, but a symptom of what he calls costly signal of kinship group loyalty. African societies, we know, are collectivist and kin-based. The focus is on the group rather than on the individual. The individual matters only to the extent of what they contribute to the overall well-being of the group; in this case, the family, which often includes extended relatives. The individual depends on the family in times of need, and the family, in turn, expects him to reciprocate when called upon. Whatever the individual thinks he owns, in reality, belongs to the family. The concept of reciprocal altruism is upheld in kin-based cultures. One of the ways you signal your loyalty to the group is by doing something costly when the family requires it of you, such as contributing your fair share to a lavish funeral for your uncle.
In many ways, kinship has its advantages. You can, at least, rely on your relatives to have your back in difficult times. The danger of kinship, which we do not talk about enough, is that it makes it difficult for the individual to accumulate wealth. A certain degree of self-interest and individualism is necessary for wealth accumulation. A communal culture, unfortunately, does not afford the individual that individualism; otherwise, he risks losing his familial bonds, and that can be deeply painful.
The author argues that kinship societies are wealth-destroying societies because they view individual success as a threat to the group. With wealth comes the ability to be independent and, ultimately, to break away from the group. The richer you are, the less you need the group. And to prevent that outcome, costly rituals like lavish funerals are made mandatory.
There is enough evidence in modern African history to illustrate how communalism and other forms of collectivist cultural norms are hostile to wealth creation. This is not only evident in culture but also in politics. George Ayittey, in his paper Africa’s Coconut Republics, describes how a wave of socialism swept across the continent in the post-independence decades of the 1960s and 1970s. The leaders of most of these newly independent African countries adopted socialism and, in many cases, attempted to cross-breed socialism with traditional African kinship. He cites examples such as Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa, Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Négritude, Kenneth Kaunda’s Humanism, the scientific socialism of Marien Ngouabi, Gaddafi’s Arab-Islamic socialism, Kwame Nkrumah’s Nkrumaism (or Consciencism), and Mobutu Sese Seko’s Mobutuism. The results were disastrous. Africa grew poorer as private enterprise was actively discouraged. The cross-breeding of socialism with African communalism became a wealth-destroying experiment precisely because it subsumed the individual. Both at the family level and at the political level, norms that place the collective above the individual almost invariably lead to poverty.
In Joseph Henrich’s WEIRDest People in the World (a book I’ve referenced a number of times on this medium and in a couple of videos), he distinguishes between interpersonal relationships and impersonal relationships. The rise of WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic) psychology started with the abolition of cousin or consanguine marriages by the Western church (the Catholic church). This singular religious edict led to unintended consequences. To get married, one would need to leave the clan. That changed the culture of Western societies from being interpersonal, clan-based, to being impersonal and individualist. This led to the rise of metropolitan cities, merchant guilds, monasteries, and other institutions that are not based on familial relationships. The breakaway from consanguineous relationships, as theorised by Henrich, is the anthropological explanation for the success and individualism we see in Western societies.
A limitation of David Oks’ argument is that it does not account for Asian countries like China, Korea, and Japan, which, despite strong kinship cultures, are wealthy economies. Among the Chinese, xiào (filial piety) is a core part of Confucian ethics. Children are obligated to support their ageing parents and sometimes extended families financially. The Korean version is called hyodo, which also means devotion to one’s parents. The Japanese call this kōkō. It’s then befuddling that despite these strong filial norms, these are some of the wealthiest countries in the world. There is, of course, never a single factor that explains something as complex as poverty. The author is partly correct: there are cultural practices that play a role in keeping Africa poor. But, I will argue, they do not explain the whole picture.
It is not lost on me how sensitive it is to critique cultural beliefs, particularly when the critique comes from a foreigner like David Oks. But facts are facts. Culture should not be immune from criticism, even when doing so is uncomfortable. We may disagree on the extent to which culture hinders Africa’s prosperity. My take is it does so to a considerable degree. And it isn’t just the expensive funerals or weddings, or owambes. It isn’t just filial obligations children owe to their parents and extended relatives. It isn’t just the crab in the bucket mentality we have in Africa. But also a culture that has prioritised what I call the algorithm of the absurd. We live at a time when thinking has become the exclusive preserve of the minority. The culture is antagonistic to the intellectual. It’s so bad that even academics are now dancing on TikTok just to fit into the zeitgeist because that is what sells. If our “elites” are entertainers and comedians, it is no surprise that things are the way they are in Africa.
If it ever came to choosing between kinship, knowing how it has contributed to keeping Africa poor, despite its many familial benefits, and individualism, knowing it correlates with prosperity, though at the cost of familial bonds, which would you choose and why?
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