Africa: Who Will Look After You When You Grow Old?

The hidden economics of ageing, migration and family responsibility

Ask an older African a simple question: Who will look after you when you grow old? For generations, the answer came without hesitation: our children. It was never a legal contract or financial product, but an unwritten agreement between generations. Parents raised their children believing that family responsibility did not end when those children became adults; it simply changed form. Children became independent, yet remained part of the family’s security in old age.

Families rarely described this arrangement in economic terms, but it performed many of the functions of a pension. Every society must answer the same question: who supports people when they can no longer support themselves? Some rely primarily on families, others on pensions, personal savings or the state. Most combine them. Whatever the mix, the answer shapes how families save, invest and prepare for the future.

Across much of Africa, the family has long been the primary source of old-age security. Parents invested in their children’s education and future, knowing that the relationship would evolve rather than end. Raising children was not only an act of love; it was also part of the family’s long-term resilience, quietly influencing decisions about work, housing, education and migration.

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Migration changes that arrangement–not because families love one another less, but because they begin living within different economic systems. A couple raising children in Birmingham, Toronto or Melbourne is also raising them within societies built around pensions, retirement savings, insurance and greater financial independence in old age. Those institutions shape expectations long before children receive their first payslip.

Migration changes the intergenerational contract, not the love between generations.

The first generation of migrants therefore occupies an unusual position. Many continue supporting parents whose retirement depended largely on their children while simultaneously building pensions and investments to ensure they themselves will not create the same dependence. They honour one intergenerational arrangement while preparing the next generation to live under another.

The first generation of migrants is often expected to finance two retirements before it has the chance to enjoy one.

This is where the economics become impossible to ignore. The problem is not financial literacy but scarcity. Every pound directed into a pension is a pound that cannot be sent to ageing parents, invested in children’s education, used for a mortgage deposit or reserved for emergencies. None of these priorities is irrational. They simply compete for the same limited income.

Economic crises intensify those choices. When pensions lose value, healthcare becomes unaffordable or public services weaken, families step in to fill the gap. Remittances therefore finance far more than household consumption. They pay hospital bills, buy medication, repair homes and respond to emergencies that stronger systems might otherwise have absorbed. Diaspora families often support not only relatives, but also the institutional gaps surrounding them.

Migration often creates opportunity. It also multiplies responsibility.

Understanding this changes the way we think about retirement itself.

For many migrant families, retirement no longer follows the familiar pattern of saving during working life and spending in old age. Instead, they are expected to build their own financial future while helping to finance someone else’s. The accumulation phase and the spending phase no longer occur one after the other. They overlap. The migrant generation is often expected to save for one retirement while helping to finance another.

That overlap explains why retirement planning can feel frustratingly slow, even for households with relatively good incomes. Pension contributions compete with remittances, mortgage deposits, school fees and unexpected medical bills. Every priority is financially sensible, and every one carries genuine emotional weight. The difficulty is not deciding which responsibility matters, but recognising that today’s income cannot fully satisfy them all. Good financial decisions are rarely about choosing between good and bad options. They are usually about choosing between good responsibilities that cannot all be fully funded.

Seen through this lens, remittances become more than financial transfers. They redistribute risk across borders. Income earned in one country absorbs illness, unemployment or emergencies in another, allowing families to protect one another against shocks that might otherwise be carried by insurance markets, pension systems or public services. In many migrant households, remittances have quietly become an insurance system of last resort.

This also explains why conversations about money can become emotionally difficult. Parents remember the sacrifices they made raising their children and naturally hope those sacrifices will be honoured in old age. Their children remember those sacrifices too, but they also see pension statements falling behind target, housing costs rising and retirement drifting further away. Neither generation is being unreasonable; each is responding to the economic realities that shaped its expectations. Families receiving support experience the relief that remittances bring. Families sending them experience the pension contribution reduced, the investment postponed or the house deposit delayed. Every remittance tells two stories: one of support received and another of security postponed.

Perhaps this is the hidden economics of migration. We often measure migration through salaries and remittances, yet its deeper story is about how families reorganise responsibility across borders. Financial decisions are no longer made for one household alone, but for several households living in different countries and different stages of life.

Solidarity, however, should never be confused with sustainability. Families can make sacrifices for years while quietly postponing their own financial security. Scarcity never disappears; it simply shifts the pressure across generations. Preparing for retirement is therefore not a retreat from family responsibility but one way of preserving it. Parents who gradually build financial independence give their children the freedom to help because they want to, not because they have no alternative. The greatest financial gift parents can give their children is not an inheritance. It is the freedom to care without carrying the full burden of financing old age.