Description

Paper as presented at the 2008 Rebuild Africa Conference held in Washington DC on August 8-9.

Separation, divorce and empty-shell families dot a number of human societies. Things have fallen apart and the centre could no longer hold. Chastity, before marriage and mutual fidelity after, which tend to promote family harmony and serenity among other cherished family values of Africans are systematically being eroded by combined forces of modernization and balkanized education. Extended family system is being replaced by nuclear family, which is further atomized and pauperized by globalized factors with its attendant manifest and unintended consequences for the stability of family. These tend to engender adverse impact on the offspring of such families. What influence has globalization and modernization played in this scenario? The paper interrogates the socio-economic correlates of the erosion of extant and pristine family values and advocates that we trace our step and return to glory of rebuilding a united, stable and sound family system in Africa learning from what our progenitors have done right.