Coming Into Its Own? Developments and Challenges for Research on Aging in Africa

For the first time, an issue of the Journals of Gerontology includes two articles from, and on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA; Ojagbemi, Bello, Luo, & Gureje, 2016a, 2016b). This landmark offers an opportunity to reflect on developments in research on aging in Africa and to speculate on perspectives for the years ahead. That such reflection is also timely is indicated by the fact that an early attempt to forge directions for inquiry on aging in Africa was made some 10 years ago—through a conference on the theme in Oxford, and the subsequent founding of the African Research on Ageing Network (AFRAN). The aims at the time were to (a) distill an agenda for evidence generation to promote the development of policy on older people specifically in areas of health, poverty, and HIV/AIDS and (b) to create a mechanism for capacity building and exchange among the small African academic, policy and practice community on aging to take the agenda forward (Aboderin, 2005). In the decade since then, inquiry on aging in the continent has not expanded much in geographical terms. It remains confined to only 20 of the 54 major countries, with just two, South Africa and Nigeria, accounting for close to a half of all work undertaken (UNPD, 2015a). Within these parameters, however, two important points of inflection have emerged. The first has been the emergence of what is now a critical mass of evidence on issues of older populations in Africa—in terms of both volume and breadth. An erstwhile illustration of this was the remarkable scope of contributions presented in the first-ever Africa Region Conference of Gerontology and Geriatrics in Cape Town in 2012. A detailed documentation of the palpable growth of the field is provided in the Directory of Research on Ageing in Africa 2004–2015 (UNPD, 2015a). In 2004, as the directory shows, only 13 (English language) studies on aging in the continent were published. By 2013, this number had risen to 85. Similarly, the period 1995–2003 saw only four cross-national investigations, compared to nine such projects, most involving four or more countries, between 2004 and 2015 (UNPD, 2015a; WHO, 2003). The spectrum of substantive areas addressed by extant research on older people in Africa now spans aspects of their living arrangements, family and intergenerational relations, work and migration patterns, experiences of care receipt and provision; and their exposure to poverty, exclusion, abuse, and emergency situations. By far most numerous are studies on the health of older adults, many of which have drawn on data generated by a few large-scale national and subnational surveys such the multi-country World Health Organization Study of Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) and the Ibadan Study of Ageing in Nigeria. The two African contributions in this issue are key examples of the latter. Besides extending scientific debate, the broadening body of evidence on the circumstances of older Africans has helped underpin an increasingly robust advocacy endeavor on this population. The thrust of the advocacy has centered on calls to (a) develop legal frameworks that enshrine the rights of older adults and (b) redress the omission of older people in sector-specific strategies, such as those on noncommunicable diseases, HIV/AIDS, or emergencies, as well as in overarching development agendas. The most intense campaigning has been directed at achieving an explicit consideration of older adults in the new United Nations (UN) global sustainable development goals (SDG) framework, which is to guide development efforts worldwide from 2015 to 2030. The SDG, formally adopted by UN Member States in September of last year, supersede the millennium development goals (MDG), which were marked by a virtual negation of issues of aging. As grounds for why a policy inclusion of older Africans is imperative, arguments have advanced, at once, (a) their particular vulnerability and exclusion, specifically from basic services, (b) their vital contributions to communities and societies (the major role of older carers within the context of HIV/AIDS being a somewhat belabored example), and (c) the specific demographic prospects for SSA. These projections show that while Africa will continue to be the youngest of all world regions, with the population share of persons aged 60 years and older remaining below 10% at least until 2055, the absolute number of older adults is already considerable and will grow more rapidly than in any other part of the globe. By mid-century, for example, an estimated 220 million older people will live in SSA—115 million more than in Northern and Western Europe combined, and 100 million more than in North America (UNPD, 2015b). There can be little doubt that the consolidated advocacy has helped beget the second step change in the debate on aging in SSA. In clear contrast to only a few years ago, issues of Africa’s older populations are now increasingly recognized as a “development” concern for the continent. Direct expressions of this, articulated by African countries collectively, are found in the African Union (AU) Common Africa Position on post-2015 development, its longer-term Agenda 2063, and, in the adoption this January of the AU Protocol on the Rights of Older Persons in Africa, which once ratified, becomes legally binding. At a global level, African States have assented to the SDG framework, which includes older people either directly or by implication in 15 of the 17 Goals and their targets (UN, 2015). By the end of May 2016, similarly, African countries will pledge to realize the WHO’s global strategy and action plan on aging and health (WHO, 2015). What, at this juncture, might be key implications and prospects for research on aging in Africa? Above all, I would suggest, there is a real opportunity for African gerontology to come into its own—if three particular challenges are embraced. The first, with a critical bearing on the other two, is a need to confront much more explicitly than thus far the heterogeneity within Africa’s older populations. On one level, this means calibrating the all-too-often dominant narrative of Africa’s older people as homogeneously disadvantaged. To do so, the disparities in capacity, privilege, and power that exist within this population must be acknowledged—and made a distinct focus of inquiry. A related task is to more fully understand the diversity of aging experiences within and across countries in the region. Besides considering the established axes of gender, age, rural/urban residence, social position, and ethnicity, this requires a focus on specific socio-spatial groups, such as older slum inhabitants, that are becoming increasingly salient within the context of Africa’s rapid urbanization (UN-Habitat, 2015). A second challenge for African aging research is to help foster a more nuanced and specific in-depth engagement with policy agendas and debates. With wide-ranging commitments to older people now in place—and acute resource constraints on the part of African governments certain—the purpose of such engagement must shift from making a broad case for action, to pinpointing what specific interventions and adaptations are needed where as a priority. Doing so requires going beyond documenting vulnerabilities, unmet need, and positive contributions among older adults. It demands careful analyses across contexts that combine understandings of (a) the concerns and desired “engagement” with life that older Africans themselves prioritize and (b) the precise ways in which present cohorts of older adults, in their familial or societal roles and positions, may be harnessed to advance Africa’s core development interests, in particular the prospects for its young. With time, a further role for research will be to help elucidate what progress is being made where toward fulfilling obligations to Africa’s older people. In addition to supporting an effective measurement of relevant SDG indicators, this implies identifying—and forging systems to generate data on—a core set of meaningful Africa-specific yardsticks that can be monitored. An elemental task in this regard is a need to develop approaches to improve the basic quality of age reporting in national surveys (Randall & Coast, 2015). A last and perhaps most fundamental challenge is for African inquiry on aging to become more essentially gerontological. Such a “turn” must involve two shifts in particular. One is a more direct and critical engagement with current theories and conceptual perspectives in the field—most of which have been forged based overwhelmingly on empirical observations made in the global North. African analyses need to examine, much more than they have done thus far, to what extent such constructs capture realities of older age in the continent and, where appropriate, propose refinements or alternative theorizing. A further necessary shift is the cultivation of a distinct research focus on a crucial substantive area that, with a few exceptions, has remained virtually unexplored in Africa. This is the very nature of the aging process itself, and particularly its socio-emotional elements (Ferraro, 2013). There can be no doubt that by embracing the above challenges African research on aging will not only come into its own but advance the gerontological scientific endeavor as a whole. By the same token, African gerontology will only thrive fully if it is connected to, and engages with, debates in other parts of the globe. This issue of the Journals of Gerontology makes an invaluable contribution to stimulating such connections.