African societies have always been acknowledged as collective in nature, where people take care of each other and families stay together – physically and figuratively. There are however, changing realities in the African context, and in 21st century Ghana for example, the dynamism of human existence in a globalized, more industrialized and urbanized world, characterized by individualism has become
the new reality. An increase in access to education for example, means that there are no ‘idle’ children at home to keep the elderly company or assist them as needed. Economic and financial pressures have also meant that young and old adults find employment outside the home, and commute for long hours in traffic, leaving senior citizens alone at home. The world’s attention (MDGs, for example) generally tends to focus on young citizens, and little attention is paid to the fact and reality that better attention paid to issues concerning senior citizens means a healthy older population, who form a repository of social capital that we can tap into for national development. In Ghana today, and perhaps in most African countries, there are almost no structured, institutional programs that cater to the needs of the ageing population. Senior citizens in the past, found avenues for meaningful engagement in their families and societies. In contemporary times, they find themselves in an ultra-dynamic environment that threatens their quality of life and leaves them with novel and complex situations to deal with. There are many un-explored avenues for meaningful engagement with them, and that is the aim of A.G.E. There are many challenges and opportunities to be explored for the benefit of all stakeholders, along multiple dimensions (political, economic, socio-cultural, health, technological, educational, environmental and legal). The aim of AGE is to rally senior citizens and set them up as a powerful bloc of stakeholders in the society at large.
