The central idea of this book is that African children are future-makers. The book explores the connections between changing childhoods and versions of African futures to develop insights into how children are living embodiments of history and prospective agents of social change. Drawing on research in diverse cultural ecologies, the authors of ten chapters discuss findings linked to apprenticeship, learning, work, rights, schools, peace, education, aspirations, conflicts and refugee integration—and how these are encountered by children in everyday life. They describe studies in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The book moves beyond hegemonic notions on African children, affording them the capacity to aspire, widening their creative imaginations in ways that deepen our knowledge of past and present childhoods. While tracing the problems of childhood in the exigencies of society, children are conceptualised neither as victims nor heroes. Instead, they are social participants whose experiences, values, desires, practices and hopes create a fertile analytical ground from which we may theorise the future and temporality more fully.
Tatek Abebe is Professor of Childhood Studies and Development Studies at Norwegian University of Sciences and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway. He founded and was the co-ordinator of the Nordic Network of African Children and Youth Research (2011–2016). In 2017, he was Director of CODESRIA’s Child and Youth Institute. He serves on the Editorial Board of several journals, including Childhood, Children’s Geographies and the Ethiopian Journal of Environment and Development.
This book focuses on African childhood and youth within the context of development and socialization where children are expected to be moulded in the image of adults. in many African societies children are generally held as passive bearers of the demands of adults, regardless of the fact that they are often exposed to a multitude of challenges that originate from the capriciousness of those adults. However, buoyed by international conventions
and national legislations that offer them greater protection, and the ubiquitous internet that exposes them to childhood and youth experiences elsewhere, many of them are increasingly becoming assertive in homes, schools, and communities as well as re-invigorating their survival and self-preservation instincts. it is in this regard that this book, through the various chapters, engages with their competencies, skills and creativity to respond to experiential challenges as independent migrants or ones under coercion working in city streets and markets or cocoa farms or juggling work and schooling in pursuit of some education. Confronted with their parents’ and siblings’ health predicaments and the inadequacies of state and familial care, or urgent negotiation of their sexualities, they demonstrate incredible resilience. similarly, their perceptiveness is demonstrated in a unique appreciation of politics and its actors and a capacity to assume responsibilities beyond their chronological age. Thus while highlighting some of the challenges confronting African children, the book provides gripping evidence of how they resiliently negotiate those challenges.
Yaw ofosu-Kusi is Associate Professor of social studies and dean of the Faculty of social sciences of the University of education, Winneba, Ghana. He obtained his doctorate degree in Applied social studies from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. His research interest is primarily in urban childhood and the informal economy, with specific attention given to child migration, street life and labour, and children’s agency. One of his publications is ‘Dreams, expectations and experiential realities of street children in Accra, Ghana’, in Narrating (Hi)Stories in West Africa (Berlin: Lit Verlag 2015).
ISBN: 978-2-86978-718-6
CODESRIA 2017