Global Patterns of Dating, Courtship, and Marriage Africa—Traditions and Transitions 1

This study examines dating, courtship, and marriage practices across Africa’s fifty-three countries, highlighting both enduring cultural traditions and emerging social transformations. Findings reveal consistent themes of family and community involvement, bride-price and dowry systems, and marriage as a kinship-based alliance rather than solely an individual decision. At the same time, modernization, urbanization, and globalization are reshaping relationship patterns through increased partner autonomy, delayed marriage, cohabitation, and hybrid courtship practices. Regional variation is evident, particularly in the influence of religious traditions, economic conditions, and urban–rural differences, underscoring the importance of avoiding overgeneralization when examining African family systems. Methodologically, this study integrates an author-developed qualitative codebook with AI-assisted analysis using ChatGPT, allowing for a comparative evaluation of analytic depth and breadth. Results indicate that while ChatGPT effectively identifies broad cross-cultural patterns, the codebook provides greater contextual specificity and cultural nuance. Together, these approaches offer a complementary framework that enhances analytic rigor and interpretive validity. Overall, African dating and marriage systems are best understood as dynamic, adaptive social institutions shaped by the intersection of culture, economics, religion, and modernization, with important implications for comparative family research and global relationship studies.