African Families Faced with NICT: Stakes and Effect on Inter-Individual and Intergenerational Relation

Background

As a communication technique and a means of bringing social actors together, NICTs are progressively becoming preferred social actors for social communication hence, reducing the « face to face » social communication which for many years regulated the functioning of African families. The effects of these new trends in communication encourage intensified migratory movements, which in the long run result in multinational families and the breakdown of African traditional solidarity, which relied on effective co-presence of family actors. The main consequence is the destabilization of the latter. In the same way, the irruption of NICTs in social life is becoming a major way to have a partner through electronic courtship. Further more, NICTs have an effect on the daily lives of individuals, and hence, constituting a major stake for the future of African families especially as they lead to a recomposition of intergenerational relationships through new communication mechanisms which sustain them.