Reimagining Reproduction Research Associate, Dr Salimah Valiani, reviews the lamentable results of the African Care Economy Index in an article published by the Daily Maverick on 15 January 2023. See part of the article below. 

A country that attains the passing grade on the UNDP’s Africa Care Economy Index is one that has basic minimum legislation and public spend in place to ensure a population that is able to take on the challenges of development as well as manage future pandemics. But not one African country scores more than half of the passing grade. 

With the rise of illness and death during the global Covid-19 pandemic, discussion about the work of caring has returned to public policy discourse around the world – but not so much in Africa. This is despite other epidemics that have hit the continent in recent decades, including Ebola and HIV/Aids. 

An October 2022 post by United Africa, a Facebook group with 74,000 followers, illustrates the underrecognition of care on the continent. It features an 1899 photo of Mohamed carrying Samir on his back. Mohamed is blind and Samir is labelled “a dwarf”. The two are described as orphans who relied on each other: on the streets, Samir would give directions while Mohamed did the walking. Samir would tell stories for pennies outside a cafe, and Mohamed would listen while selling wares. Together they survived into adulthood. 

What is emphasised in the United Africa post is that Mohamed and Samir coexisted even though one was Muslim and the other Christian. Nothing is said of the interdependence and care of two individuals living with what are now known as disabilities – estimated to affect up to 40% of Africa’s population. 

Care is both assumed and ignored. 

Despite the immense need for care in Africa today, little is done by states or by society at large to recognise, support and respect care. The demand for care in Africa arises from the following realities: 

• The continent boasts the world’s highest birth rate, at four live births per woman;
• The bulk of food consumed is produced through subsistence farming; and
• The ill and elderly are cared for at home and in communities in contexts of war, violence and longstanding impoverishment.

Africa has been noted as the region with the “most unshared system of care”, where more than 70% of care is provided by unpaid, individual caregivers in homes and communities.

This compares with the “shared system of care” in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, and the “semi-shared system of care” in Latin America and Asia, where the work of caring is shared collectively through public, private and community-run programmes and institutions.

In Africa, the vast majority of caring work is done by women and girls. The health of women in Africa is particularly poor. About 30% of women around the world are anaemic, for instance, and more than half of these women are in Africa. 

Women and girls are “time poor” — the time they spend on housework and other caring is far greater than time spent on these tasks by boys and men. This takes away the possibility for girls and women to benefit from education and paid work.

The gap in caring work done by women and girls versus men and boys in Africa ranges from over 16 times more by women and girls in Egypt, five times more in Senegal and two times more in South Africa. 

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) Africa Care Economy Index attempts to draw attention to this dire reality. Change is crucial to improve the wellbeing of women and girls, as per the 2007 African Feminist Charter, but also to materialise Africa’s demographic dividend into greater collective wealth.