The Afo, who call themselves Eloyi, like other ethnic groups in Africa, represent motherhood in art in the form of women with large breasts suckling, whether in carved wood, lost-wax bronze, ivory, stone or terracotta. The Afo style is recognisable by the round faces and the numerous linear scarifications, including on the breasts and on the face, in the form of cat's whiskers.

The Afos were decimated by the British around 1930; today they are a small group of 35,000 individuals settled in villages in the central plains of Nigeria and engaged in agriculture, textile manufacturing, hunting, fishing and trade. Their religion is traditional, animist.

The theme of motherhood is universal and recurrent in art throughout black Africa. African maternity statues do not usually express the emotional bonds between mother and child, as they symbolise the fertility of women and the earth, belong to the domain of the sacred and are often displayed on an altar. The mothers are in a hieratic position, very well sculpted, while the child, often a small adult, is barely sketched, especially the body, and there are almost never any glances between mother and child.

In many African ethnicities, the left side of the body is associated with the sacred: in most black African maternity wards, the child is positioned to the left of the mother or suckling from the left breast.