Relevance of - United Nations Economic Commission for Africa

Despite such pockets of active women’s participation in political decision-making,
however, women generally are subordinated to men in much of Africa, and especially in
the patrilineal systems. As is the case in many decentralized political systems, bridewealth
is said to subordinate women in many centralized systems, such as the Baganda
of Uganda (Gray, 1960).
• Changes in gender rights
While their impact on the patrilineal and matrilineal social organizations is unclear,
education and urbanization, along with active state involvement in supplanting traditional
marriages with legal marriages, have led to some improvements in women’s conditions.
Cameroon, for instance, has registered a notable decline in bride-wealth payments and
widow-inheritance. It has also made progress in improving the inheritance rights of
children and in raising the age of marriage by promoting mass education. However, less
than 50 per cent of the African population lives in urban areas and only roughly the same
ratio is literate. Thus, many of the mechanisms that subject women to oppression, including
abduction, arranged marriages without the consent of the bride, and marriage at an early age,
are still widely practiced. A 2003 report by Ehiopia’s National Committee on Traditional
Practices, for example, indicates that marriages by abduction in the Southern Nations and
Oromia regions of Ethiopia account for about 92 per cent and 80 per cent of all marriages,
respectively (BBC, May 15, 2006).
2. The debate over the relevance of traditional institutions
The relevance of traditional institutions, especially chieftaincy, to the transformation
of African economies and governance systems is highly disputed in the post-colonial
literature. At the risk of over-generalization, three strands can be identified in this
discourse. One highly skeptical strand contends that chieftaincy is anachronistic, a
hindrance to the development and transformation of the continent, undemocratic,
divisive, and costly. Among the arguments advanced by this view are that:
• Chieftaincy has been corrupted by the colonial State and by the clientelism of the
despotic post-colonial State and is, thus, no longer subject to accountability to the
populace (Zack-Williams, 2002; Kilson, 1966);
• Populations under traditional authorities, as in South Africa, live as “subjects” rather
than as citizens of the State, and democratic governance would not be achieved
while such systems continue to exist (Mamdani, 1996; Ntsebeza, 2005);
• Chieftaincy heightens primordial loyalties as chiefs constitute the foci of ethnic
identities (Simwinga, quoted in van Binsberger, 1987: 156);
• Chieftaincy impedes the pace of development as it reduces the relevance of the
State in the area of social services (Tom Mboya, in Osaghae, 1987; Law and
Development, 1974); and
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