Seven days after a child is born in Senegal, family members and relatives gather to visit the mother and newborn at a celebration called “Nguenté.” This memorable festivity, often held even more magnificently than a wedding, sees everyone bringing gifts for the mother. Things like fabric, jewelry, and clothing are among the presents, which are meant to create a joyful memory of the child’s birth for the mother, as the child is considered a gift from God and a divine blessing.
In many Nigerian villages, too, the news of a baby’s birth prompts the entire village to celebrate, marking a day to remember for the village. These sweet and cherished memories are etched in the minds of many African youths. Yet, the image we often have of African families and mothers is largely an image that has been conveyed to the world in the media and in the words of Western officials. It is an image of hardship, hunger, suffering, and overcrowding.
Since 2012, developed Western countries have launched comprehensive and costly programs for “family planning and population control” in Africa. The beginning of these initiatives was the depiction of Africa’s current conditions. Direct interference in the continent’s lifestyle as well as family and social norms during the age of expanding media required impactful imagery and propaganda in order to influence public opinion in Western countries and among African elites to minimize negative reactions.
Hungry, poor, and overpopulated
Since 2000, the portrayal of sub-Saharan African nations has aimed to depict all aspects of life in these countries as being in crisis. This narrative has largely focused on the significant population growth in these countries in recent decades. From 2000 to 2017, Africa’s population increased by 58%, with an annual growth rate exceeding 2.5%. This population surge, driven by economic and healthcare advancements of the continent, has brought its own set of challenges. This population growth is yet to align with Africa’s economic development, and countries in sub-Saharan Africa still lag behind in achieving favorable economic conditions.
Indigenous African cultures have adapted to these challenges.
Despite having many children, big African families play a very supportive role towards mothers and newborns. However, due to inadequate healthcare infrastructure, mortality rates among pregnant mothers in these countries remain alarmingly high, and infant mortality rates in this region are also significant. Despite high mortality rates, African families are truly fond of having many children, and the continent’s population is witnessing rapid growth. It is expected that by 2050, Africa will host approximately one-fourth of the global population. Yet, Western leaders and capitalists view this as a dire threat. “This is a ticking time bomb... especially considering environmental issues, there will be far less food... this is a major crisis,” they claim. Westerners’ concerns about food shortages in Africa, which they have made a central theme in their media narratives, arise at a time when the continent has a high capacity for food production, from meat to sugarcane, corn, tropical fruits, etc., which require investment and planning. From the perspective of a British population expert, whose own country has a population density of 280 people per square kilometer, in Africa, “a very large number of people will have to live in a very small area.” Yet most sub-Saharan nations have relatively low population densities, and only two African countries with populations exceeding ten million have higher population densities than Britain.
Western countries, and in particular US authorities, have in recent years leveled serious criticisms against Africa’s indigenous family norms. They have pursued the legalization of homosexuality and the normalization of sexual deviations in Africa. Not only do they fail to acknowledge the strong belief of sub-Saharan Africans in the institution of family, but they also portray it as oppressive to “sexual minorities,” advocating for “justice” in this area through their policies.
West comes to Africa’s aid!
After successfully portraying Africa’s population and women’s issues as crises, Western countries launched a specific plan of action. International foundations announced a $5 billion investment in population control projects in Africa. This initiative entailed the widespread distribution of contraceptive drugs and tools, sex education for African youth, ensuring African women’s easy access to abortions, and creating more security and freedom for African women.
In 2014, major governmental and international organizations participated in the Family Planning Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, including USAID, UNFPA, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), and companies promoting abortion and contraception, including IPPF and Marie Stopes. This major conference decided to provide over 120 million African women and girls with access to contraceptives and abortion services by 2020. As part of these efforts, documents and educational materials were produced, outlining Western countries’ birth control schemes.
These materials explicitly discussed freedom of sexual expression, the recognition of homosexuality, and the necessity of changing African societies’ views and actions toward family. It appears that the grand and “benevolent” plan of Western countries for Africa and African women involves altering the institution of family, discouraging women and girls from forming families and having children, and ultimately preventing childbirth even if families are formed. The plan aims to improve the condition of African nations by controlling their population and culture.
Tiger cannot change its stripes
In a speech on December 17, 2024, during a meeting with diverse groups of women from across the country, Imam Khamenei assessed the motivations of capitalists in interfering with women’s issues, stating: "Global capitalists intervene in the topic of women just as they do in all aspects of people’s lifestyle. What is their goal? Their true goal is political and colonial intrusion. They intervene to lay the groundwork and provide cover for further encroachment, greater interference, and the expansion of their sphere of influence. This motive, which is actually a criminal, corrupt motive, is hidden behind a philosophical guise, a theoretical guise, and a humanitarian appearance."
Focusing on the issues of women in Southern and Southwestern Africa reveals clear traces of this dishonesty by Western capitalists. Following centuries of bloody and brutal colonial rule by Britain, France, and other Western nations, Africa faced a power vacuum after World War II. While liberation movements sought to establish new governments, former colonial powers aimed to regain their influence in the continent. Due to various factors such as famine, prolonged wars, widespread political corruption, and foreign interventions, Africa did not progress as it deserved. Nevertheless, African nations have achieved significant economic and political growth. However, the insufficiency of this growth has allowed former colonial powers to return to Africa under a different guise, seeking to seize its resources.
Africa’s growing population could be an extraordinary opportunity for the continent’s economic growth. This rise in the youth population brings power, fresh motivations, creative ideas, and unparalleled energy to a nation. However, this would restrict the colonialists and current capitalists from exploiting the continent’s resources. If Western countries, their humanitarian foundations, and major global capitalists were genuinely after helping the African people and making amends for their dark colonial past, their investments in the continent would focus on literacy programs, infrastructure development, public health, training specialists, and supporting political stability. However, it seems that even their investment in Africa is nothing but a colonial investment.
When African women repeatedly express in surveys their desire to have many children, and African families view each child’s birth as a divine blessing, they talk of distributing contraceptives and birth control medicines. When statistics show that the population density in many European countries surpasses that of Africa[1], and that Africa’s potential for agricultural and industrial growth far exceeds Europe’s, Westerners again insist on reducing Africa’s population instead of developing its infrastructure. When data reveal that the lack of access to safe abortion accounts for less than one-tenth of the primary causes of maternal mortality in Africa—and that most mothers die due to high blood pressure, severe postpartum hemorrhage, and obstetric complications—Westerners promote access to abortion as the solution to saving African women’s lives. And finally, when African men and women express their attachment to their cultural and religious family values, Western policymakers amplify efforts to spread sexual deviations in these nations, using widespread propaganda and the threat of withholding aid.
Yet the objective is clear: The West does not want Africa to become an advanced, populous, and powerful continent. It pursues this aim by undermining the roles of mothers and spouses and dismantling the institution of family in Africa. As highlighted in the articles "Family under attack" and "American slavery, not abolished but also exported," the family institution is the core of resistance against cultural and economic imperialists. Isolated and atomized individuals are far more easily transformed into slaves of the Western capitalist machine, while the family serves as one of the most crucial barriers that societies and religions possess to resist this system of enslavement. It is precisely for this reason that the roles of African women as spouses and mothers have come under such severe assault by major Western capitalists.
[1] Ekeocha, Obianuju, Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism in the Twenty-First Century, IGNATIUS PRESS. 24.
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