Wealth Accumulation and effect on Adolescent Socialization into Economic Independence Among the Bamileke of West Cameroon
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18721971Keywords:
Wealth accumulation, sociocultural-values, socialization, economic-independenceAbstract
This study investigates the effect of wealth accumulation practices on the socialization of adolescents into economic independence amongst the Bamileke of West Cameroon. The study was conducted in 8 selected villages in the Bamboutos Division of the West Region of Cameroon. The research question that guided this study is: How does autonomy affect adolescent socialization into economic independence? The study was anchored on one theoretical perspective, namely, Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of capital is central to understanding how wealth accumulation affects social structures. The study adopted a concurrent nested mixed method research design whereby both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed. Overall, 384 adolescents and 16 parents making a total of 400 participants from 8 selected villages participated in the study. The adolescents responded to questionnaires while parents were interviewed. Quantitative data were analysed using the linear regression analysis while qualitative data were analysed using content thematic analysis. The results show that f (95.702) with p = 0.000. This suggests that there is a significant effect of wealth accumulation on adolescent socialization into economic independence among the Bamileke. Consequently, the null hypothesis (Ho1) was rejected while the alternative hypothesis (Ha1) was accepted. It therefore means there is a significant effect of wealth accumulation on adolescent socialization into economic independence among the Bamileke. It was concluded that wealth accumulation serves as an educational tool and a source of motivation for economic self-reliance and that traditional systems of wealth acquisition, such as apprenticeship, communal labour (njangi), and family investments, significantly influence adolescents’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship, savings, and community leadership. Also, the Bamileke model of economic socialization could inform youth empowerment strategies in Cameroon and sub-Saharan Africa at large. Recommendations were made to policy integration, community programmes, further research, parental engagement and adolescents. Some of them being that educational policies should incorporate traditional economic socialization models to promote youth entrepreneurship, community programmes should establish youth mentorship initiatives modelled after Bamileke apprenticeship systems, further research should investigate similar practices among other ethnic groups for comparative youth empowerment strategies. Families should be encouraged to involve adolescents in practical wealth accumulation activities for experiential learning.
References
Aker, J. C., & Mbiti, I. M. (2010). Mobile phones and economic development in Africa. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(3), 207–232. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.24.3.207
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.5.469
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice Hall.
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood.
Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95–S120. https://doi.org/10.1086/228943
Fomba, C. N. (2017). Entrepreneurship development in Cameroon: A case study of the Bamileke people. Journal of African Studies and Development, 9(4), 25–34. https://doi.org/10.5897/JASD2016.0411
Guyer, J. I. (1993). Wealth in people and self-realization in Equatorial Africa. Man, 28(2), 243–265. https://doi.org/10.2307/2804430
Heath, S., & Roberts, J. (2008). Young people’s social capital and the negotiation of pathways into and out of education and employment. Journal of Youth Studies, 11(1), 95–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676260701690443
Hino, H., & Ranis, G. (Eds.). (2014). Youth and employment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Working but poor. Routledge.
LeVine, R. A., & LeVine, S. E. (2016). Do parents matter? Why Japanese babies sleep soundly, Mexican siblings don’t fight, and American families should just relax. Public Affairs.
Loury, G. C. (1977). A dynamic theory of racial income differences. In P. A. Wallace & A. M. La Mond (Eds.), Women, minorities, and employment discrimination (pp. 153–186). Lexington Books.
Meagher, K. (2010). Identity economics: Social networks & the informal economy in Nigeria. James Currey.
Mokomane, Z. (2012). Youth unemployment and helping behaviour in African families: The case of South Africa. Development Southern Africa, 29(1), 105–114. https://doi.org/10.1080/0376835X.2012.645649
Nsamenang, A. B. (1992). Human development in cultural context: A third world perspective. Sage.
Nsamenang, A. B. (2002). Adolescence in Sub-Saharan Africa: An image constructed from Africa’s triple inheritance.
In B. B. Brown, R. W. Larson, & T. S. Saraswathi (Eds.), The world’s youth: Adolescence in eight regions of the globe (pp. 61–104). Cambridge University Press.
Ojong, V. B. (2007). Entrepreneurship among the Bamileke of Cameroon. Anthropology Southern Africa, 30(3–4), 104–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2007.11499999
Parsons, T., & Smelser, N. J. (1956). Economy and society: A study in the integration of economic and social theory. Routledge.
Portes, A. (1998). Social capital: Its origins and applications in modern sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.1
Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon & Schuster.
Schoon, I., & Bynner, J. (2003). Risk and resilience in the life course: Implications for interventions and social policies. Journal of Youth Studies, 6(1), 21–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/1367626032000068145
Serpell, R. (1993). The significance of schooling: Life-journeys in an African society. Cambridge University Press.
World Bank. (2020). Cameroon economic update: Towards inclusive economic growth. The World Bank Group.
Yaro, J. A. (2006). Is deagrarianisation real? A study of livelihood activities in rural northern Ghana. Journal of Modern African Studies, 44(1), 125–156. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X05001448
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 IPHO-Journal of Advance Research in Education & Literature
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Author(s) and co-author(s) jointly and severally represent and warrant that the Article is original with the author(s) and does not infringe any copyright or violate any other right of any third parties and that the Article has not been published elsewhere. Author(s) agree to the terms that the IPHO Journal will have the full right to remove the published article on any misconduct found in the published article.
