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Ageing in West Africa

  • Chapter
International Handbook of Population Aging

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Population ((IHOP,volume 1))

West Africa is one of the four sub-regions of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It comprises 15 major countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. The dynamics and implications of population ageing in these nations are best examined in the context of a debate on ageing in SSA as a whole. The first part of this chapter, therefore, charts the origins of this debate and critically examines its scope and the key concerns and perspectives at its heart. In light of this, the second part critically reviews what we presently know about the demography of population ageing and the demographics of the older population in West Africa and what key knowledge gaps remain. The review draws mainly on existing literature from the Anglophone countries of West Africa. Given language limitations, it is unable to capture the body of publications from the region’s francophone and lusophone nations. Indeed, it is important to note the significant impediment that language barriers pose to the flourishing of scientific discourse on ageing in Africa as a whole. A second note of caution due at the outset concerns the importance of recognizing the diversity that exists in the cultural, social and environmental contexts in which the ageing of populations and individuals unfolds in West Africa. Nigeria alone, for instance, comprises over 350 ethnolinguistic groups, spread over geographically disparate areas (Nugent 2004; DFID 2004). Sub-regional overviews, as offered in this chapter, are thus inevitably general, able to capture only broad, cross-cutting themes. An in-depth understanding requires country specific research and analyses.

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  1. Oxford Institute of Ageing, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Isabella Aboderin

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina Hamilton Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210, CB 3210, USA

    Peter Uhlenberg

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Aboderin, I. (2009). Ageing in West Africa. In: Uhlenberg, P. (eds) International Handbook of Population Aging. International Handbooks of Population, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8356-3_12

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