Wealth Accumulation and effect on Adolescent Socialization into Economic Independence Among the Bamileke of West Cameroon

ABSTRACT 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.