Ubuntu: Africa’s traditional insurance system

Recently, while engaged in a casual conversation with a certain gentleman, he told me how a couple of decades ago, a public passenger bus drove through their family herd, killing a number of cows. As soon as this happened, the community where they stay organized a number of cows almost twice the number of the ones that had got killed and presented them to the family as compensation for the family’s loss. This conversation aroused sentimental feelings about a number of such traditional practices that provided safety nets within African societies in the past. Even today, some of these practices may still manifest in some communities, but they are largely being overridden by individualistic tendencies.
 
Ubuntu, an African word simply meaning “humanity to others”, is an embodiment of many positive virtues which made African society one in which sharing, cooperation and harmonious co-existence was of prime importance to all the peoples, across communities. The above scenario where a family, after losing cows in an accident, gets compensated with more animals than they lost, through community self-mobilization is typical Ubuntu at work. In this particular case, Ubuntu played a social insurance function to the affected family.

In the olden days of African society, when one had to travel a long distance, they could embark on the journey with the assurance that they could find accommodation, feeding and supplementary travel supplies such as food in various homes of “strangers” along the path of the trip. Some of the interesting records of such high grade humanness are to be traced in African folk tales, detailing experiences of sojourners finding care and provision in homes of strangers. It was a form of travel insurance, addressing uncertainties and unknowns that could meet long distance travelers in ancient Africa.

In my own community among the Bakiga, and up to recent times, it was the practice that when a young man attained the age at which one had to own a house, the community would come together and build him one. On such occasions, women and children would work together to prepare meals for builders while the men availed and prepared building materials and undertook the actual construction works.

 This was a form of social insurance, and various other such arrangements, designed to give the population good mileage in achieving universal needs, were inbuilt in the community social system.

While growing up, I witnessed communal, rotational farming arrangements where groups of people would congregate and cultivate different farms of members, one at a time. The farm owner would simply provide meals to feed the workforce on the day they handled his farm. In such fashion, every farmer or family would have their farms tilled and their seed planting done in good time before the onset of rains. Some of these practices still exist in rural communities, but perhaps at lower scale than what was in years gone by. 

In many African societies, when a married man died young, his widow and orphans were assuredly taken care of within the extended family structure. All responsibilities that the man would have undertaken on behalf of his family were assigned amongst his brothers, thus minimizing the burden of bereavement that befell the widow and orphans. It was expected that a man’s brothers were in position to treat the fallen man’s family as they would their own wives and children. 

The arrangement, in simplicity, represented a life insurance policy for family heads. As such, there was no possibility of despair visiting families that were unfortunate to lose family heads when the children were still so young to meaningfully take over the responsibilities of their fathers in ensuring welfare of the families. 

The African social cultural system had inbuilt safety nets that served an insurance purpose, for practical purposes. The premium was payable by individuals and families in society, simply by act of being responsible participants in system. Ubuntu, as a pillar of African culture was a principle of social responsibility. It was ingrained and imparted in the conduct of individuals and societies.

 It was transmitted across generations by word of mouth from elders to the young, as well as through active practices that younger generations learnt through observation. 

As times have changed, and African culture has been adulterated by various shifts, the spirit of Ubuntu is much less today. The pursuit of profit in almost all we do, the cutthroat competition in almost all areas of life and the escalation of individualistic tendencies have delivered their blow to the admirable humanness that characterized society in the past.

Raymond is a Chartered Risk Analyst and risk management consultant
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