How funerals keep Africa poor - David Oks

Why the poorest people in the world spend fortunes burying their dead

Consider, for a moment, a funeral in Ghana. Suppose you’re an elderly Ghanaian—let’s say you’re Kofi, age 74, an Akan. One day, you do as all humans must and die. Perhaps you die at your modest bungalow in a northern suburb of Accra, Ghana’s capital. What happens next? A few things. First, your immediate family will discover that you’re dead; and, in order to deal with the logistics of your death, they call the head of your extended family: the abusuapanyin. This is not your closest surviving relative. The Akan are matrilineal, and the maternal line “owns” the body, so the abusuapanyin is…

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