The elderly—usually defined as those over 60 years of age—often tend to be an overlooked lot. And it is not merely ageism—discrimination based on age that fuels stigma and oppression of the elderly in society—but the reality of other urgent and pressing demographic concerns such as high child and maternal mortality rates.

With the next generations in mind, Kiswahili has a gentle way of overlooking them, saying, wamekula chumvi ya kutosha ("they’ve licked enough salt”, meaning, they have already tasted enough of life).

Note also the urgent concern of unemployed youth, who remain a powder keg of social and political unrest and have to be mollified somehow.

But the numbers of the elderly in our societies are fast increasing demanding urgent attention.

The African Development Bank says the elderly could account for 4.5 percent of the continent’s population by 2030, and almost 10 percent by 2050. They constituted 3.6 percent of the population in 2010.

The projections gain a clearer focus when one looks at the increasing rate of life expectancy at birth. Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life.

The World Health Organisation explains that global life expectancy at birth in 2015 was 71.4 years (73.8 years for females and 69.1 years for males), ranging from 60.0 years in the WHO African Region to 76.8 years in the WHO European Region.

Women live longer than men all around the world. The gap in life expectancy between the sexes was 4.5 years in 1990 and had remained almost the same by 2015 at 4.6 years.

WHO says global average life expectancy increased by 5 years between 2000 and 2015, the fastest increase since the 1960s. Those gains reverse declines during the 1990s, when life expectancy fell in Africa because of the AIDS epidemic, and in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The 2000-2015 increase was greatest in Africa, where life expectancy increased by 9.4 years to 60 years, driven mainly by improvements in child survival, and expanded access to antiretrovirals for treatment of HIV.

Life expectancy in the East African Community describes the same upward trend, though the numbers differ between the member states.

According to the UN World Population Prospects 2015, Tanzania leads with a life expectancy of 64.04 years, followed by Rwanda at 63.14 years and Kenya at 60.62.

Uganda, Burundi and the latest EAC member, South Sudan, are below the 60-year mark. The 2015 UN Prospects puts Uganda’s life expectancy at 57.25 years, Burundi at 56.07 and South Sudan 55.06.

Women in Rwanda have the highest life expectancy at 66.30 years, followed by Tanzania at 65.55 and Kenya at 62.17.

But, as the AfDB observes, African nations are in general not best equipped to deal with the rise in numbers of older people.

Predictably, the main concerns are healthcare provision and pensions. Contributory pension schemes, the AfDB notes, cover very few people due to the informality of most livelihood activities and employment. 

Most societies are predominantly rural and much of the population operates outside the security of formal sector, wage-dependent markets.

It therefore follows that affording healthcare for the vast majority of the elderly is an issue of great concern, especially with governments in Africa spending far less on health care than in most of the developed world.

The elderly are left with little wherewithal. The AfDB quotes one study of 15 African countries where many poorer people had to borrow or sell property to pay for healthcare.

As the bank observes, the problem is compounded by deterioration in traditional patterns of family support in Africa, due to growing urbanisation and – is some African countries – the effects of HIV/Aids despite wider availability of ARVs.

It’s time we took a closer look at the situation of increasing numbers of elderly with a view to the future and their implication to the growing African economies.

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Editor — A recent report by the World Health Organisation put Rwanda’s life expectancy at 66.1 years, the third highest in Africa, closely following Morocco and Senegal.