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African Solutions for African Problems

Their country. Their people. Their culture.

‘Before the 1960s children dressed like their parents, ‘after the 1960s parents dressed
like their children’
The above is a how we describe the extent of the societal changes that overtook the UK

during the ‘swinging sixties’. In reality, such dramatic changes occur in all countries that
experience a sustained surge in economic affluence.

As each country becomes affluent, a series of societal changes take place and
combine to change relationships between generations.

(As companies get bigger, they open up branches in new regions. Naturally, they prefer to take
experienced people to manage these new branches. This leads to many young people moving to live at
long distance from their parental home.

And large companies develop their own language, their training courses teach these young people to
think and talk in a new language. A language that deals in business terms and business maxims.
And when these young people visit their parental home, they increasingly feel a distance from their
parental teachings and guidance. The parents seem more and more irrelevant to the young people's
modern life.

In turn the parents, increasingly lose confidence in themselves. Their adult children are by now earning
sums that the parents would once have considered as unobtainable. And their adult children have
seemingly unending access to modern possessions and experiences.
So it is that intergenerational relationships gradually straining become separate and to some extent
reverse. You can expect this to happen in all underdeveloped countries as they become much more

affluent.)
Different cultures will slow down the process because their traditional values are so deep
and strong that they are that much harder to undermine.

(This sort of evolution is also another potential disconnect, as Africans, some of whom as
academics have reported carry with them a heightened degree of mistrust, and who are much

more wedded to traditional religions and the like, and many of whom sense the conflict between
capitalist commodification and traditional African communitarianism, don't want to see their

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African view of generational relationships replaced by modern day m'zuŋ u values)
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Africa's mistrust

“ This article adds to a new and growing literature in economics that seeks to better understand
the role that culture, norms, and beliefs play in individual decision making. Generally, the

empirical literature has focused on either showing that culture exists or on identifying the