Ghanaian Migrants in Toronto, Canada: Care of Kin and Gender Relations

In the literature on African development, ‘traditional’ institutions such as extended families, land tenure systems and indigenous systems of authority have been presented as fetters on development by not allowing African societies to become more fully ‘modern’. Scholars like Goran Hyden (1980) have castigated African states for being ‘weak’ and ‘over-extended’ and Hyden has coined the term ‘the economy of affection’ to describe such societies (1983).