Bagbin Rejects Western Nuclear Family Model, Urges Africa to Codify Its Own Family Structure

Rt. Hon. Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament and Chairperson of the Inter-Parliamentary Union of Africa, has called for a redefinition of the African family in the 21st century, warning against adopting what he described as an “oversimplified or imported” definition.

Delivering the keynote address at the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Sovereignty and Values in Accra, Bagbin said the Western concept of the nuclear family fails to reflect African realities.

“The western concept of the nuclear family, isolated, individualistic, lonely, and strictly bounded, fails to capture the expansive, resilient, and self-sustaining generous of the African family,” he told lawmakers.

To illustrate the contrast, Bagbin pointed to cultural attitudes around food and hospitality. “Over there they say ‘chop time no friend.’ In Africa it’s at chop time that you show friendship,” he said, drawing agreement from the audience. “We’re brought up to always reserve food for certain visitors. Any woman that fails to do that, if the certain visitor enters, you forfeit your food for the visitor.”

He described the African family as “an intergenerational web of mutual responsibility” that includes grandparents who carry historical memory, aunts and uncles who share in child care, and a wider community that provides daily support.

Bagbin urged legislators to anchor their work in the mandates of their electorates and resist external definitions of family that do not fit African social structures. “There’s the urgent need for us to redefine the African family structure in the twenty-first century,” he said. “In trying to do so we must avoid adopting an oversimplified or imported definition of the family.”