National Culture and Africa Revisited: Ethnolinguistic Group Data From 35 African Countries

Abstract

Africa is a continent of considerable cultural diversity. This diversity does not necessarily run in parallel to the national boundaries that were created in Africa in the colonial period. However, decades of nation building in Africa must have made their mark. Is it possible nowadays to distinguish national cultures in Africa, or are the traditional ethnolinguistic distinctions more important? This article uses an approach developed in cross-cultural psychology to examine these questions. In 2012, Minkov and Hofstede published an article in this journal analyzing World Values Survey data from seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa at the level of subnational administrative regions. They argued that national culture is also a meaningful concept in this region. This study reexamines the matter. It uses an innovative approach, looking at ethnolinguistic groups instead of at administrative regions and using the much more extensive Afrobarometer survey data set. It finds that although the Minkov/Hofstede study still has merit, the picture is more nuanced in several important ways. There is not one pattern that adequately describes the situation in the whole of Africa. 1

Economic Development and Modernization in Africa Homogenize National Cultures

“…The findings of Minkov and Hofstede (2012, 2014a, 2014b) and van Pinxteren (2019) bring a new perspective on cultural sharedness. They suggest that groups of people, such as populations of national administrative regions, religious groups within a nation, and ethnolinguistic groups within a nation, do share cultural traits such as values and beliefs.…”

“…The fact that the African nations are quite young and ethnolinguistically diverse, as well as van Pinxteren’s (2019) findings, suggest that ethnolinguistic culture may be an important differentiator in Africa, perhaps as important as national culture, and in some cases even more important. This question is left unanswered by van Pinxteren as he did not compare ethnolinguistic cultural variation with national variation.…”

Examining the Impact of eWOM-Triggered Customer-to-Customer Interactions on Travelers’ Repurchase and Social Media Engagement

“…Our unique cultural angle adds to the emerging cross-cultural insights of cognitive dissonance and advances the understanding of customers’ social media eWOM engagement. Furthermore, the intracontinental cultural differences highlight the cultural diversity of Africa and reinforce the importance of culture-specific consumer behaviors and marketing practices (van Pinxteren 2020). Thus, the current study adds fresh insights to previous studies that limited the study of eWOM evaluation across cultures (Hwang and Mattila 2018; Shin, Perdue, and Pandelaere 2020).…”

Ugandan men’s experiences and perceptions of their fathering roles.

“…Moreover, drawing from our social constructionist approach, we acknowledge that within the U.S. context, factors such as structural racism may play a relevant role in the parenting experiences of Ugandan men who immigrate to the United States. When Ugandan fathers arrive in the United States, they find themselves inhabiting the identity of a minority based on their race, and there is compelling research that indicates that racism has the impact of eroding masculinity notions among men who hold minoritized identities (Strier & Roer-Strier, 2010). Thus, how Ugandan men navigate such experiences, given that they have been found to situate their perceptions of fathering within notions of masculinity, is a question that is yet to be addressed.…”

“…Hence, more research is needed to obtain further clarity. It is important to note that there is not one single homogeneous African culture, and there is indeed a great deal of cultural diversity on the continent (van Pinxteren, 2020). However, there are underlying cultural commonalities and consistencies in cultural foundational frameworks between a majority of African societies that, when contrasted with non-African societies and cultures, reveal much greater differences (Idang, 2015; Lesejane, 2006).…”