Just over a year ago at Leaderex, Sherry Tapfuma and Craig Torr challenged a long-standing assumption in our industry — that black Africans don’t plan for the future. It’s a narrative we’ve never subscribed to, and one that doesn’t hold up when you look at the lived experiences of people across our continent.
Sherry grew up in rural Zimbabwe; Craig on a farm in the Eastern Cape. Both saw firsthand how black African families invested in land, transferred wealth across generations, and honoured their culture through practices like lobola. They saw the deliberate ways people provided for their families — often without formal financial instruments — and how these customs were part of a deeply ingrained legacy system. Yet, as planners, we’ve also seen how historical and structural forces have disrupted those systems and created new challenges for wealth preservation.
For many black South Africans who came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic changed the course of their families’ financial future. The disease disproportionately struck young and middle-aged adults — the very generation who should have been building and transferring wealth. It left behind orphans, child-headed households, and grandparents raising grandchildren on insufficient social grants.
Estate planning was rare, Wills were often unwritten, and assets such as a modest home or cattle sometimes disappeared into disputes or were sold off to pay for funerals. The result was often a generation that inherited responsibility, trauma and financial instability – and very little in the way of assets.
Fast forward a few decades, and many of those children are now the first in their families to earn a steady income, own property, or meet with a financial planner – their approach to money being shaped as much by memory as by ambition. They know what it means to bury a parent with no resources, to pay for a sibling’s education, or to support an ageing relative while raising their own children. For them, financial planning is about more than just investment returns – it’s about ensuring that the cycle of loss and economic vulnerability is not repeated.
Sherry often speaks about how, in her culture, land passes from father to son. While daughters may work the land, contribute to its upkeep, and care deeply about it, the formal transfer of ownership rarely includes them. As a financial planner, she’s seen how this custom creates a gendered wealth gap where sons inherit tangible, appreciating assets, while daughters are expected to ‘marry into’ wealth – if they marry at all. These customs are not unique to Zimbabwe; variations of this practice exist in many African communities, meaning that women often only manage to access intergenerational wealth through marriage, leaving them vulnerable in the event of divorce, death or dispute.
Encouragingly, we’ve seen these traditions beginning to evolve with daughters being named in Wills, trusts being created with equal beneficiaries, or women being supported to buy property in their own names. We believe that these changes should not be seen as a rejection of culture, but expansions of it – adaptations that preserve family wealth by broadening access.
We believe that financial planners must meet clients where they are, culturally and contextually. Too often, financial advice is delivered as though every client operates from the same baseline of knowledge, the same relationship with money, and the same set of family dynamics – whereas in reality, people bring complex histories into the planning process – histories that have been shaped by custom, loss, resilience and adaptation.
The reality is that in many African households, lobola, land allocation, and family obligations are as central to financial decision-making as retirement annuities or tax-free investments – and ignoring them risks alienating clients and producing financial plans that don’t reflect their values or realities.
We believe that inclusive financial planning begins with understanding the whole story. It means exploring beyond the assets and liabilities and understanding family structure, cultural traditions, and the history of wealth – or its absence – in the household. It requires empathy for clients who may have survived financial trauma or disruption, and for whom financial planning is as much about healing the past as preparing for the future. It also calls for flexibility as we navigate longstanding traditions with clients who might want to ensure a daughter inherits part of the family farm while also honouring a son’s traditional claim. Another might wish to structure a Will that recognises extended family obligations without compromising the financial security of their spouse and children. Instead of seeing these as contradictions to be ‘solved’, we should view them as realities to be worked with respectfully.
The misperception that black Africans do not plan for the future overlooks the planning that happens outside the formal financial sector. It ignores the land purchases, livestock management, and family agreements that have sustained communities for generations. It also discounts the adaptations people are making today – from drafting Wills and buying life cover earlier in life to saving for extended family members alongside their own children. As planners, we believe that our role is not to replace cultural practices with a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model, but to integrate them into a framework that protects and grows wealth for future generations. This requires listening before advising, respecting before restructuring, and appreciating that financial planning is not culturally neutral.
If we’re serious about closing the wealth gap in our country, we must expand our understanding of what legacy means in different cultural contexts. This includes recognising how historical disruptions – like the HIV/AIDS pandemic or apartheid-era dispossession – still shape financial behaviour today, and how traditions influence decisions around inheritance, property, and family responsibility.
Financial planning, at its best, is about helping people tell the story they want their money to tell when they’re no longer around. For some, that may mean a family trust and a diversified investment portfolio, while for others it may mean ensuring the family farm stays in the family, funding lobola for a son, or setting aside resources for a niece’s education. All of these are valid financial goals and deserve to be met with the same professionalism and respect.
One year on from the Leaderex challenge, we believe this more determinedly than before: the future of financial advice in South Africa lies in its ability to adapt to cultural nuance and meet clients where they are at – culturally, contextually and centric to their unique needs and circumstances.
Have a fantastic day.
Sue
