Polygamy: Why do so many African Nations Practice It?
- sexblogger52
- Apr 7, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 28, 2024
Polygamy, although never officially legal in the United States has been not only lawful but practiced with much zeal all throughout Africa for many hundreds of years. Even today, in many African countries such as Kenya, it is still practiced.
Where the reader finds poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, he or she is bound to find poverty. There are many arguments as to why polygamy breeds poverty, such as there can be no productive investment, or girls do not get an education when their fathers are multiplying wives (Fenske, 2013). But there are just as many questions as there are answers as to why poverty and polygamy go hand in hand.
Africa, as poor as it is and as widespread as polygamy is practiced, still today it is not as bad as it was sixty years ago. In the countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Senegal, sixty percent of married women in 1960 reported being in polygamous marriages, while in the same four countries, in 2000 only forty percent of women reported being in polygamous marriages.
Of course, the practice of polygamy goes back hundreds of years and it occurred because the poor communities in African villages wanted to populate the villages faster so the men would multiply wives and have lots of children. Nowadays, however, the population is plenty high in Africa.
According to a United Nations (UN) report, to whom is opposed to polygamy, “Demand for children is higher on average in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region,” (Muhumuza, 2018) and the fertility rate per woman is around 5.1 percent. (Muhumuza, 2018).
If we take a look at West Africa, we see that many of the women living there in polygamous marriages have very unique needs. West Africa has one of the highest fertility rates in not only Africa but the rest of the world as well (DHS, n.d.). One interesting fact that should be pointed out is that in countries where polygamy is widely practiced, there are more women in those countries who desire more children than women who hail from countries that do not practice polygamy (DHS, n.d.).
Birth control, or the lack of it, is more of a cultural instead of an economic issue. The women who are from polygamous countries are less likely to choose to use contraception, whereas, women from more developed countries where polygamy might be outlawed, are more likely to use birth control. Therefore, it is prudent to say that maybe poverty and polygamy go hand in hand because the people who live in these countries do not mind living poor because they just like children and big families so much that they do not mind sacrificing personal comforts and luxuries for the joys of parenthood (DHS, n.d.).
What might be hard for the Western mind to comprehend is business as usual in more primitive cultures like Burkina Faso. Still, in such areas of the world as Western Africa they will probably always be poor and the people will likely never give up their cultural heritage and very well should not any more than American should give up our customs and traditions because someone from another country thought they were old and outdated.
The eastern mindset probably thinks that we are different and strange seeing how we do not practice polygamy.
It is hard to change people’s customs that have been in existence since people have existed.
References
(2013, November 9). African polygamy: Past and present. VOX CEPR. https://www.prb.org/resources/polygamy-in-west-africa-impacts-on-fertility-fertility-intentions-and-family-planning/
Muhumuza, Rodney. (2018, October 24). Polygamy persists across Africa, to activists’ dismay. AP News.
Polygamy in West Africa: Impacts on fertility, fertility intentions, and family planning. PRB. https://www.prb.org/resources/polygamy-in-west-africa-impacts-on-fertility-fertility-intentions-and-family-planning/
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