With its failing economies and leadership crises, Africa harbours some of the world’s most interesting cases of male impotence. This reality cannot be detached from the fact that family life in most African countries depends heavily on fathers.
The manipulative belief that as head of the family, the father must shoulder all the responsibilities of upkeep further compounds the burden most African men face, one that directly affects their sexual life. Many men internalise this expectation as a sacred duty, and even when circumstances do not favour them, they continue to push themselves beyond their emotional and physical limits. The consequence is often a slow but steady decline in their sense of well-being, confidence, and ultimately their sexual function.
A man who bears the burden of family subsistence, amidst all the psychological stress that comes with it, cannot always perform his sexual functions optimally. Thinking out of the box to figure out the means of survival alone is a huge burden on its own and can affect the hormonal architecture of any family man. Endocrinologists generally agree that stress has a way of affecting sexual performance. This idea is predicated on an endocrine mechanism where a man’s libido falls due to low testosterone levels coupled with high cortisol levels.
Over time, this hormonal imbalance not only reduces sexual desire but also makes it increasingly difficult to maintain normal erectile function. The connection between the mind, the hormones, and the sexual organs is so delicate that even a slight alteration in psychological stability can trigger long-term effects.
Similarly, lack of adequate sleep and sometimes hard labour are also significant triggers of male impotence. A man who works for long hours every day except Sunday and whose salary is poor is most likely to develop erectile dysfunction. The reason is that lack of sleep and poor nutrition negatively impact a man’s sexual life. While lack of sleep remains one of the major factors that lead to high blood pressure, poor nutrition threatens hormonal balance.
In some parts of Nigeria, men who wake as early as 4 a.m. to beat traffic and return home late at night find themselves completely drained. After years of this routine, the body begins to obey the cumulative effects of fatigue, hypertension, and nutritional deficiency. These issues quietly eat into their sexual vitality long before they realise what is happening.
Lifestyle choices also play serious roles in shaping the sexual health outcomes of African men. In Nigeria, Ghana and the Republic of Benin, the majority of low-income-earning men live a similar pattern of life, understandably due to their limited purchasing power. Such men would usually prefer to eat what is known as puff-puff (a popular deep-fried snack made from a yeasted dough consisting of flour, sugar, water, and sometimes nutmeg or milk) with sugar-sweetened beverages, unlike their more financially buoyant counterparts who have structured timetables for balanced diets.
Medically speaking, the former are more likely to develop non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. These diseases are known to affect sexual potency. When the arteries are clogged or blood flow becomes irregular, the first casualty is often erectile function, because erections depend heavily on healthy and unrestricted blood circulation.
However, African men, especially those within struggling economies, can extricate themselves from the curse of poverty by eating nature. They can achieve this by cultivating fresh vegetables in their surroundings. One doesn’t have to be rich to do this. Vegetables like spinach, bitter leaf, jute leaf, water leaf and scent leaf have special nutritional values that boost sexual health and the general well-being of men.
Most importantly, African men who don’t have the luxury of financial power should avoid a sedentary life by all means possible. They should prioritise physical exercise. Something as simple as regular morning walks, jogging, or moderate home workouts can enhance blood flow, elevate mood, and stabilise hormones, all of which are crucial for sexual performance.
As observed earlier, the age-old myths about masculinity have been a major problem. The erroneous belief that the man alone must shoulder all the burdens of his family both psychological and financial should be relegated to the dustbin of history, as it is a retrogressive one in modernity. If a man is blessed and can afford to shoulder all family responsibilities alone then that is a choice. But what is counterproductive is for the man alone to shoulder all family responsibilities when his wife has the capacity to support him.
Modern marriage is hinged on the principle of shared responsibility. The responsibilities do not have to be equally shared. What matters is that the women are supporting their husbands. This modern approach saves the man from undue stress and the probability of developing sexual impotence.
