Should Bride Price Be Abolished? A 297-Cow Wedding Reopens the Debate
This discussion was first published in September 2009 and updated in November 2026 with new reporting. Two families in South Sudan spent weeks this year bidding to marry the same woman. The winning bride price, according to reports, was 297 cows, about $77,000 in cash and several plots of land. Thon Chol Riak married Atong [...]
Black News 
This discussion was first published in September 2009 and updated in November 2026 with new reporting.
Two families in South Sudan spent weeks this year bidding to marry the same woman. The winning bride price, according to reports, was 297 cows, about $77,000 in cash and several plots of land.
Thon Chol Riak married Atong Aguto Monyroor in Juba on February 1 after his Abang community outbid a rival suitor put forward by the Awulian community, whose offer reportedly included 158 cows and about $25,000, TNX Africa and Watchdog Uganda reported. Neither outlet named a source for the figures, which spread first on social media.
Some people saw a Dinka custom carried out in full. Others called it wasteful and asked who can afford to marry when offers climb that high.
Bride price, also called lobola, roora, ruracio or bridewealth depending on the country, is the payment in cash, livestock or goods that a groom’s family makes to the bride’s family. African Vibes first asked readers in 2009 whether it should be abolished. In 2026 the question has come up again in at least seven countries, and almost nowhere is it being asked in the same way.
ALSO READ: 15 Tribes With Surprising Bridal Traditions In Africa
Kenya: a father hands the bride price back
The newest turn in the debate comes from Kenya, and it runs in the opposite direction to the Juba wedding.
A Kenyan woman named Helina told Parents Africa Magazine that after her ruracio, the Kikuyu bride price ceremony, her father called her into his room and handed her an envelope. Inside was the money he had just received from her husband, Roger Muhia. He told her the couple needed it more as they started their life together and asked them to put it in a joint account, K24 Digital reported on November 2.
K24 had reported in March that younger Kenyans are rethinking the practice, with many couples settling on symbolic amounts because of the cost of living and later marriages. The outlet cited no survey figures.
Kenya’s courts have pulled the other way. The High Court in Kisii, in a ruling by Justice Kizito Magare, upheld an order that a woman return her dowry after divorce under Kisii custom, even though it had been paid to her parents, Kenyans.co.ke reported in October 2025.
Uganda: the bride price is legal, the refund is not
Across the border, the law says the reverse.
The post you are reading began with a Ugandan mother, Deborah Awori. On September 8, 2009, she told the Constitutional Court in Kampala that she had tried and failed to stop her husband from marrying off their 14-year-old daughter, Evelyn, for the payment it would bring. Her testimony supported a petition filed in 2007 by MIFUMI, a Ugandan women’s rights organisation, which argued that bride price undermines free consent to marriage and fuels domestic violence.
The Constitutional Court ruled against the petitioners in 2010. In August 2015 the Supreme Court gave each side part of what it wanted. By six judges to one, it held that families may go on asking for bride price but that demanding a refund when a customary marriage ends is unconstitutional, according to Uganda’s Judiciary.
Parliament has not followed up. A Marriage Bill tabled in 2024 lapsed when the 11th Parliament’s term ended, its sponsor, former Tororo Woman MP Sarah Opendi, said in June. She has asked the new Parliament to take it up again.
Then, on August 1, President Yoweri Museveni raised the cost of marriage himself. “Why ask for 15 cows and millions of shillings?” he asked guests at a giveaway ceremony in Kiruhura District, The Independent reported. He said couples were starting married life in debt and urged religious leaders to preach restraint. He did not propose a law.
Nigeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ghana: an argument about cost
In Nigeria, the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly passed a resolution in June calling for bride prices and marriage requirements to be standardised. The motion, sponsored by Selinah Ukpatu of Ikot Abasi/Eastern Obolo, asks the state’s Traditional Rulers Council to review what families demand, The Whistler reported. It is a request to traditional rulers and does not set a legal limit.
In Zimbabwe, finance lecturer Dr Shame Mugova argued in an October column for New Zimbabwe that couples are paying for lobola and weddings before they have secured housing or savings, often with borrowed money. “Lobola should honour a family, not financially cripple the family being created,” he wrote.
In South Africa, a woman’s TikTok video of a lobola negotiation attended only by the two sets of parents split viewers in October, Briefly News reported. Some wanted exactly that privacy. Others said leaving out uncles and aunts weakens the family ties the custom exists to build.
Ghana supplies the counterpoint. In the Builsa area of the Upper East Region, a young woman identified as Gloria has campaigned for traditional authorities to review a custom she says asks too little. Requirements such as kola nuts and drinks, she argues, undervalue educated women, YEN reported in April.
The two sides have not moved
Those who want bride price abolished argue that a payment changes how a wife is seen. If a man has paid, he and his family may treat her as property, and her own family has a financial reason to send her back when she leaves. They also link the custom to early marriage. In Uganda, 34% of girls marry or enter a union before they turn 18, according to Girls Not Brides.
Defenders say the abuses distort a custom that is, at its core, a gift exchange joining two families and showing a groom’s commitment. Many see calls for abolition as one more attempt to measure African traditions against Western ones. That view is common among women as well as men, and Uganda’s highest court heard the full case against bride price and declined to strike it down.
What African Vibes readers have said
Readers have argued this out in the comments below since 2009 without agreeing. One group wants the practice gone, on the grounds that a gift with a fixed price is not a gift. A second, the largest in the comments, wants it kept but reduced to a symbolic token. A third sees any change as the loss of something that belongs to Africa.
Our poll leans further. Of 276 votes so far, 42% say bride price should be abolished, 32% say it should be reformed and regulated, and 26% say it should be left alone.
Take our poll
Should bride price be abolished, reformed or left alone? Has it shaped a marriage in your family? Tell us in the comments.
