Orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Crisis, the Interventions, and the Anthropologist

Abstract

Response to the orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa has focused mainly on mobilizing and distributing material resources to households with orphans. Only a few anthropologists have interrogated the frameworks and values on which the projects for orphans are based. In this paper, I analyze the trends in foster-care research in Africa and suggest that current ethnographic data on foster-care practices do not adequately reflect the changing context of fostering in Africa. There is a need for fresh anthropological evidence on fostering because of death. It is only when new data are generated that effective and culturally sensitive programs for orphans and the people who are directly responsible for their well-being can be developed. With fourteen million children orphaned because of AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa is facing an unprecedented crisis, which could be exacerbated because many more of the 22.4 million people living with HIV—60 percent women—will become ill and die for lack of life-saving antiretroviral treatment, to which only 45 percent of pregnant women have access to prevent transmission of HIV to their babies. Also, armed conflicts are causing more children to be orphaned. The responsibility for orphans is mostly borne by older women, who depend upon support from external partners comprising international