Africa is living longer. Are its systems ready?

On a football pitch in Nairobi’s Donholm estate, the future of Africa’s ageing population is being played out at walking pace.

Whenever Tobias Ocholla, a former defender with Kenya’s national football team, Harambee Stars, blows the whistle, he reminds a six-a-side team of older players, both men and women, most in their 50s and above, that there are no sprints or tackles.

Players are required to walk, pass the ball and keep moving until the game is over.

At 63 years old, Ocholla, famously known as ‘Jua Kali’, is training the team, Donholm Eagles, to adapt football to their changing bodies.

He told bird story agency in an interview that walking football is a form of preventative healthcare and a way of challenging the idea that reaching retirement age means becoming less active and useful to society.

“This is now like a hospital, where we come and just make sure that our bodies are ever active, so that in case there are diseases that are cropping in, it’s taken care of by the level of preparedness,” Ocholla said, pausing.

“Because even if you go to the hospital and you are given medicine, and the body is not strong enough to sustain the strength of the medicine, one can easily succumb.”

Walking football also gives him a way to remain active after a lifetime in conventional football.

“I’ve done a lot of active football. This is now just to kind of maintain that kind of intensity of football I was in, when playing,” he said.

One of the pioneers of walking football in Kenya, Mureithi Riitho, who started playing the sport in late 2024, also said he was looking for a way to stay healthy while reconnecting with his peers.

“I knew right away it was the right sport for my age because of its in-built safety regulations and I needed to stay healthy as I grew older, get out of the house and meet with my peers,” Riitho told bird story agency.

He added: “As a Christian believer, I also saw an opportunity to evangelise and bring back older persons to Christ.”

Walking football is also gaining a foothold elsewhere on the continent, increasingly being used to keep older people active while creating opportunities for social interaction.

In Nigeria, organisations such as the Waka Football Association have built a community presence, with the country participating in the inaugural 2023 World Nations Cup and Lagos hosting events including the Walking Football Parkinson’s Cup.

Rwanda introduced the sport around 2019 and sent a national team to the 2023 World Nations Cup, where it finished ninth and received the tournament’s Fair Play award.

South Africa has developed structured community programmes based on small-sided, non-contact games, while Egypt, Morocco, Namibia, Ghana, Zambia and Uganda have also engaged with international walking football bodies or expressed interest in developing the sport and participating in continental and global tournaments.

Annual events such as the East Africa Legends Festival are also gaining traction as platforms for older athletes to remain active, socialise and showcase their skills.

The festival brings together retired football icons and former players aged 60 and above from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and South Sudan for age-appropriate sporting activities, while promoting healthy ageing and marking the United Nations’ International Day of Older Persons.

Ocholla’s players in Kenya and rising number of countries adopting walking football are part of small community responses to a demographic transformation that is increasingly seeking more attention of African governments.

While Africa remains the world’s youngest continent, it is also ageing rapidly.
Riitho attributed part of the shift in demographics to greater public awareness and government investment.

“I believe it is because of better health education and greater investment in health services by African governments,” he said.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa estimates that the continent’s population aged 60 and above will more than triple, from the current 74 million to more than 220 million by 2050.

The projected rise comes as many African countries continue to struggle to provide adequate healthcare and social protection for their growing younger populations, potentially adding further pressure on governments as the number of senior citizens increases.

Africa’s development agenda is currently dominated by its youthful population, with governments under pressure to create jobs, expand education, improve infrastructure and convert a rapidly growing working-age population into an economic dividend.

But as the older generation grows, healthcare systems will also have to respond to rising demand for long-term and chronic disease care. Pension schemes will face pressure to cover more people for longer periods, while governments will have to consider how older people without formal employment histories can access income support.

Parts of Northern and Southern Africa are already experiencing growing pressure on care infrastructure, including pensions, healthcare and social protection, because of the rise in the ageing population, according to a 2025 report by the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET).

“This creates a dual challenge—capitalize on the demographic dividend before the first window of opportunity closes, and prepare for the fiscal demands of aging,” the ACET report said.

The challenge is particularly acute where social-protection coverage remains low.

Only about 17 per cent of the older population enjoys social protection, according to a 2024 study by Agence Française de Développement examining South Africa, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Kenya, Morocco and Senegal.

The low coverage has been linked partly to traditional contributory pension systems that depend largely on formal employment. Much of Africa’s workforce earns its living outside formal payroll systems.

A market trader, smallholder farmer, casual worker or informal transport operator, for instance, may spend decades working without accumulating an employer-backed pension. For such workers, retirement is often not a clearly defined economic stage.

Some continue working for as long as their health permits. Others depend on children and extended family. Some rely on community support or government cash transfers.

The World Bank’s State of Social Protection Report 2025 found that social protection had expanded significantly across low- and middle-income countries, reaching 51 per cent of the population in 2022, up from 41 per cent in 2010.

But two billion people remained uncovered or inadequately covered, with more than one billion of them in Africa and South Asia. In low-income countries, three out of four people received no form of social protection.

For about 400 million people, the report said, benefits they received were so small that they might not lift them out of poverty, support their healthcare needs or adequately cushion economic shocks.

Families, which remain the principal social safety net in much of Africa, have often been the ones to absorb most of the costs.

“There is still a lot more that governments and individuals need to do in order to be at par with the more advanced countries. In our case here in Kenya, we should aim to make healthcare free for all citizens irrespective of age,” said Riitho.

Older women bear some of the greatest costs of ageing, with UN Women data showing that in lower-income countries, unpaid care can come with a much heavier price.

Older women were less likely to have adequate pensions or financial protection and were often forced to continue working while caring for family members.

UN Women data showed wide differences in cash-relief coverage of older people across African countries, with women receiving coverage rates of 10.5 per cent in Kenya, 9.6 per cent in Mozambique and 4.5 per cent in Ethiopia, while coverage was much higher in Senegal, where 58 per cent of older women were covered.

The World Bank found that women received, on average, 81 cents in social-protection benefits for every dollar received by men across a sample of 27 countries.

There are a number of social-protection programmes across Africa.
South Africa operates an Older Persons Grant through the South African Social Security Agency, providing means-tested support to eligible people aged 60 and above.

Mauritius has a universal, non-contributory basic pension for citizens aged 60 and above, alongside other welfare measures.

Namibia and Botswana operate universal old-age grants, while Uganda provides support to older people through its Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment programme.

Kenya has cash-transfer mechanisms targeting vulnerable older people under its wider social-protection framework.

Riitho singled out South Africa as a reference point, while stressing that institutional reform mattered as much as individual programmes.

“I am not very familiar with the programs of North African countries but I’d say South Africa leads the rest of Africa in providing good health care and social security for its citizens. For the rest of us, good governance, particularly the eradication of corruption and gross incompetence and result-oriented planning in all sectors is key.”

Ocholla called for a review of retirement policies, arguing that retirement systems should be redesigned from being solely about withdrawing older people from the labour market to creating space for flexible work, mentoring, advisory roles and community participation.

He argues that Kenya’s formal retirement age is 60, but rejects the assumption that this marks the end of productive contribution and that accumulated experience should cease to be an asset after retirement.

“If you start work at the age of 20 and then you work up to 60 years… how much experience do you have? By the time you are retiring, you can still have your advisory services, where you give people direction,” he argues.