Some cultures have patrilineal inheritance, where only male children can inherit, or matrilineal succession, where property can only pass along the female line. Others have egalitarian inheritance, without discrimination based on gender and/or birth order.^{[citation needed]}

The social structure prevalent among the southern Bantu informed their religious beliefs. The expansion of southern Bantu peoples, such as for example the Xhosa, is attributed to the fission of younger sons.

Patrilineal primogeniture prevailed among the Xhosa ("each eldest son, upon the death of his father, inherits all the property appertaining to his mother's house"), the Pondo, the Tswana, the Ndebele, the Swazi, the Zulus, the Sotho, the Tsonga, the Venda and most other southern Bantu peoples; among them in general the first son was conceived of as superior to his siblings.

The Zulus also practiced patrilineal primogeniture, allowing only minimal grants of land to younger sons.

Customs of male primogeniture also prevailed among the Sotho.

Precedence within clans and tribes based on patrilineal primogeniture was also common among the Khoi and the Damara.

The Hausa did not have the conical clan as their system of social organization (in Africa, this system predominated mostly among southern African peoples), but had a complex system of hereditary social stratification as well.

The British thought that the Hausa Law of Primogeniture was bad because it encouraged usury and mortgage.