It was a very insightful experience at the just ended EFA2019.  It was exciting to be part of discussions focusing on moving the continent forward but the question remains will the human capital needed to implement all the laudable ideas will be able to have the emotional, psychological and mental fortitude needed in addition to all the other skills to push forward such laudable agendas?

Currently the statistics of young people in Africa is 70% below the age of 21.  What are the experiences of these young people?  How many of them have stable homes as strong foundations?  How many of these young people have positive, impactful father figures to guide them in their daily lives or to help them navigate interesting life situations? Speaking to delegates and fellows at the just ended EFA2019 made it crystal clear that we have a social crises looming on our continent; they all spoke about the rampant problem of irresponsible fatherhood in their respective countries. My work with Single Parents Families in my country Ghana, coupled with all the stories from the other delegates confirms the fact that, we have a fatherhood crises looming in Africa and we need strategic intentional steps to tackle the issue.

Granted there are many wonderful fathers and father figures who are doing amazing work but the numbers are woefully low and beggars more attention in this area.  Africa has in a total of the last 50 or more years in different parts, have had many pockets of civil wars causing political instability in many countries across the globe. Many families were scattered as a result of these wars and many fathers lost their lives. Family life as they knew it was disrupted, leaving behind its trail a number of fatherless, orphaned and traumatised young people in their wake whose only memory of life as they knew it in their formative years is chaos.  Then there is the category that is orphaned because their parents died during the confusion of the HIV Aids epidemic outbreak when there was so much misinformation and an absence of the antiretroviral drugs in the beginning and many people as a result died leaving behind their children.  Not too long ago Ebola also wiped out many parents who left behind orphaned children.

The extended family system as we knew it is fast disappearing.  The stability of the extended family system which provided a safety net and a sense of belonging to children in situations as I described above is not as dependable anymore due to harsh economic realities and the influence of western cultures, many people nowadays tend to focus on their nuclear families.  This means that, the young people who hitherto had the guardianship of Uncles, Grandfathers and other elders in the family who had oversight over them are now left to their own devices and are left to ‘raise’ themselves leading to the rise in child homelessness and streetism.

Irresponsible fatherhood is also on the increase due to many factors, either fathers are ill equipped or they are running away from responsibility, to just plain abandoning their children after their relationship with the mothers go south.  In a recent rough survey I did to access the situation of fathers who remain in the lives of their children after a breakup, it turns out about 70% of fathers just abandon ship.  What this means is that the mothers are left to single-handedly raise these children, most of the time without any family support or social protection.  This becomes a big drain on the overall wellbeing and wholeness on mothers raising these children as they strive to provide, financial, emotional, moral, educational, etc support for themselves and their children.  Thankfully there are many success stories as some of these mothers raise really fine children. But it cannot be denied that many of these children fall through the cracks and do not thrive the way they would have, had they had strong support systems and guidance.

The ripple effects of irresponsible fatherhood is felt by everyone from the child to the mother, the community, the countries and eventually the continent.  We lose out on the full participation of everyone because human capital which could have been harnessed for development is labouring under the burden of providing for her children and most often than not does not have any more energy left to contribute to the larger society the way she would have had her circumstances been less dire.

For the development agenda of the African continent to succeed in this era and beyond, we cannot afford but to start having conversations surrounding strengthening the family systems in a way that will create a more stable and productive society. We will need deliberate and strategic steps to tackle this issue.  For instance, I found out that Rwanda as a way of integrating young people and children orphaned by the war into the society, adopted a system where these children were assimilated into families so they can have a sense of family and belonging.

We will need to look at existing policies in our countries, update and implement them to bring irresponsible fathers to book.  We can initiate conversations in our communities and at a national level that urge capable father figures to step in as mentors to the children who need it.  We also need to build the capacity of the single parent families by making available resources such as, appropriate conflict resolution that allows those who can, to successfully co-parent, counselling and therapy services to positively boost their mental and emotional health, skills development and training and other resources as may be needed per demography to help them raise well-balanced children because the state should have a vested interest in these children because they are the ones who will drive the next level development agenda of Africa.

Putting in place a fatherhood movement where fathers’ capacity are built to understand their role as fathers and the impact the neglect of this all important role has on both the nuclear family, community and the overall development agenda of Africa. This is important because of the gap that was created by family disruptions through wars, disease, economic situations etc, there is a generation of fathers now who were fatherless themselves and so just do not have the idea of how to be responsible dads.

For the African continent to be able to implement all the beautiful ideas discussed at the just ended #EFA2019 and thrive, we cannot continue to have development discussions without a focus on the family system and the way the next generation is being parented, and the effect the neglect is having on their psyche and their total well-being and how that is going to inform their decision making which will largely affect the future of Africa.

The current state of affairs is not sustainable and constitutes violence against women and children as the burden is left solely on the mothers to raise the future of Africa, which tells on their overall well-being and wholeness. The children are also deprived of having the positive influence of fathers and many of whom end up being raised in financial and relational poverty.

What, then, must we do about this? The first step is to acknowledge that we have a problem and to shed the persistent cultural indifference to the father absence issue that we have on the continent. We must by all means continue the discussions on business, technology, intra-trade, future of work, but also be intentional at bringing to the table, social issues surrounding the family which are critical to affecting the success of the implementation of the development agenda regards the future of Africa. It will be detrimental to the future of Africa if we neglect to address the issue of the ever increasing single parent homes and what has become the legacy of irresponsible fatherhood and fatherlessness; it has the high probability of affecting our ability to develop our full potential as a continent due to its ripple effects.

Let’s bear in mind that a society is only as strong and vibrant as its people and families.

Emefa Gadze – EFA2019 Delegate

Founder, Single Parents Support Network (Accra, Ghana)

16th July 2019