Children and Young People in Africa
- LAST REVIEWED: 17 November 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 February 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0036
- LAST REVIEWED: 17 November 2016
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 February 2019
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0036
Introduction
Research on children and youth in Africa has played a formative role in the advancement of theories in child development, international development, and youth studies. Before the establishment of childhood studies as a distinct area of research in its own right, many Africa-focused texts—if they mentioned children at all—placed them in a corollary role to that of adults; child well-being was taken as a barometer of parenting or the state of a country’s development progress. With the advent of more child-centered research, much of the more recent literature developed on children, youth, and childhood in Africa centers on children as objects of—and sometimes respondents to or participants in—national/international development. Perhaps because Africa’s development indicators are comparatively low, scholarly work on children tends to take a development- or rights-centered approach. Popular topics focus on the hardships young Africans face: how poverty drives children into laboring, soldiering, or otherwise hazardous activity or how children suffer disproportionately from economic and political insecurity. The influence of HIV/AIDS is also ubiquitous. Because of its profound effect on every aspect of life, HIV/AIDS cross-cuts many sections in this bibliography. The literature on young people in Africa also considers the vast potential of this demographic majority of the population (nearly half of the continent’s population is under fifteen years old). Most research now focuses on child/youth agency in the face of social, economic, and political challenges, seeing young people as a resource for development—sometimes by drawing on and reframing African cultural traditions.
Journals
With the exception of Childhood in Africa, no other journals focus exclusively on African children, but there are a number of childhood studies journals that regularly feature articles about Africa, including Global Studies of Childhood and Childhood, which focus on children’s social relations and culture. The goal of Childhood in Africa is to encourage collaboration between scholars and development practitioners, while Childhoods Today is geared toward postgraduate students. Both Children’s Geographies and Children, Youth and Environments deal with young people’s space and place, although the latter, along with Children & Society, is more concerned with policy and service recommendations.
Covering a range of disciplines and geographical regions, this journal concentrates on children’s social relations and children’s culture, particularly through the lenses of rights and generational analysis. While it has been largely academic and Eurocentric, more and more Africa-related articles are being published here.
The only journal specifically focused on African children, this free, open-access journal was created to foster collaboration between African scholars and development practitioners around the world working on topics related to young people in Africa.
Online journal for postgraduate students. There are few pieces about Africa to date, but there are a number of pieces that discuss methodology for working with children.
This journal focuses on scholarship about child-related policy and services, with the aim of strengthening empirical and theoretical approaches to children’s all-around well-being.
Concerned primarily with spaces and places of young people in their respective societies, this journal has published extensively on African children’s geographical worlds.
Children, Youth and Environments.
Online, peer-reviewed journal that publishes action-oriented research about establishing suitable environments for child and youth well-being. This journal publishes a fair number of articles concerning Africa.
Global Studies of Childhood.
Multidisciplinary journal that interrogates how children experience and navigate globalization and its effects. Interested in how childhoods are conceptualized differently across various global contexts.
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Article
- Abduction of Children
- Aboriginal Childhoods
- Addams, Jane
- ADHD, Sociological Perspectives on
- Adolescence and Youth
- Adolescent Consent to Medical Treatment
- Adoption and Fostering
- Adoption and Fostering, History of Cross-Country
- Advertising and Marketing, Psychological Approaches to
- Advertising and Marketing, Sociocultural Approaches to
- Africa, Children and Young People in
- African American Children and Childhood
- After-school Hours and Activities
- Animals, Children and
- Animations, Comic Books, and Manga
- Anthropology of Childhood
- Archaeology of Childhood
- Ariès, Philippe
- Attachment in Children and Adolescents
- Australia, History of Adoption and Fostering in
- Australian Indigenous Contexts and Childhood Experiences
- Autism, Females and
- Autism, Medical Model Perspectives on
- Bereavement
- Best Interest of the Child
- Bioarchaeology of Childhood
- Body, Children and the
- Body Image
- Boy Scouts/Girl Guides
- Breastfeeding
- Bronfenbrenner, Urie
- Bruner, Jerome
- Buddhist Views of Childhood
- Byzantine Childhoods
- Child Beauty Pageants
- Child Homelessness
- Child Protection
- Child Public Health
- Child Trafficking and Slavery
- Childcare Manuals
- Childhood and Borders
- Childhood as Discourse
- Children and Film-Making
- Children and Social Media
- Children and Sustainable Cities
- Children as Language Brokers
- Children as Perpetrators of Crime
- Children in the Industrial Revolution
- Children with Autism in a Brazilian Context
- Children, Young People, and Architecture
- Children's Humor
- Children’s Museums
- Children’s Reading Development and Instruction
- Children's Views of Childhood
- China, Japan, and Korea
- China’s One Child Policy
- Citizenship
- Civil Rights Movement and Desegregation
- Class
- Classical World, Children in the
- Clothes and Costume, Children’s
- Colonization and Nationalism
- Common World Childhoods
- Competitiveness, Children and
- Congenital Disabilities
- Constructivist Approaches to Childhood
- Consumer Culture, Children and
- Consumption, Child and Teen
- Conversation Analysis and Research with Children
- Critical Approaches to Children’s Work and the Concept of ...
- Critical Perspectives on Boys’ Circumcision
- Crying
- Disability
- Discipline and Punishment
- Discrimination
- Disney, Walt
- Divorce And Custody
- Dolls
- Domestic Violence
- Drawings, Children’s
- Early Childhood
- Eating disorders and obesity
- Education
- Environment, Children and the
- Environmental Education and Children
- Ethics in Research with Children
- Eugenics
- Evolutionary Studies of Childhood
- Fairy Tales and Folktales
- Fathers
- Female Genital Cutting
- Feral and "Wild" Children
- Fetuses and Embryos
- Filicide
- Films about Children
- Films for Children
- Folklore
- Food
- Foundlings and Abandoned Children
- Freud, Anna
- Freud, Sigmund
- Friends and Peers: Psychological Perspectives
- Froebel, Friedrich
- Gangs
- Gay and Lesbian Parents
- Gender and Childhood
- Geographies, Children's
- Globalization
- Hall, G. Stanley
- Happiness in Children
- Hindu Views of Childhood and Child Rearing
- Hispanic Childhoods (U.S.)
- Historical Approaches to Child Witches
- History of Adoption and Fostering in Canada
- History of Childhood in America
- History of Childhood in Canada
- HIV/AIDS, Growing Up with
- Homeschooling
- Images of Childhood, Adulthood, and Old Age in Children’s ...
- Infancy and Ethnography
- Infant Mortality in a Global Context
- Innocence and Childhood
- Institutional Care
- Intercultural Learning and Teaching with Children
- Islamic Views of Childhood
- Juvenile Detention in the US
- Key, Ellen
- Labor, Child
- Latin America
- Learning, Language
- Learning to Write
- Legends, Contemporary
- Literary Representations of Childhood
- Literature, Children's
- Magazines for Teenagers
- Maltreatment, Child
- Marxism and Childhood
- Masculinities/Boyhood
- Material Cultures of Western Childhoods
- Media Culture, Children's
- Medieval and Anglo-Saxon Childhoods
- Menstruation
- Middle Childhood
- Middle East
- Migration
- Miscarriage
- Mothers
- Multi-culturalism and Education
- Music and Babies
- Native American and Aboriginal Canadian Childhood
- New Reproductive Technologies and Assisted Conception
- Nursery Rhymes
- Organizations, Nongovernmental
- Orphans
- Parental Gender Preferences, The Social Construction of
- Parenting
- Pediatrics, History of
- Peer Culture
- Peter Pan
- Philosophy and Childhood
- Piaget, Jean
- Play
- Politics, Children and
- Postcolonial Childhoods
- Post-Modernism
- Poverty, Rights, and Well-being, Child
- Prostitution and Pornography, Child
- Psychoanalysis
- Queer Theory and Childhood
- Race and Ethnicity
- Racism, Children and
- Radio, Children, and Young People
- Readers, Children as
- Refugee and Displaced Children
- Rights, Children’s
- Risk and Resilience
- Russia
- School Shootings
- Sex Education in the United States
- Sexuality
- Siblings
- Social and Cultural Capital of Childhood
- Social Movements, Children's
- Social Policy, Children and
- Socialization and Child Rearing
- Sociology of Childhood
- South African Birth to Twenty Project
- South Asia
- Special Education
- Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence
- Spock, Benjamin
- Sports and Organized Games
- Street Children
- Street Children And Brazil
- Subcultures
- Sure Start
- Teenage Fathers
- Teenage Pregnancy
- Television
- The Bible and Children
- The Harms and Prevention of Drugs and Alcohol on Children
- The Spaces of Childhood
- Theories, Pedagogic
- Tourism
- Toys
- Transgender Children
- Tweens
- Twins and Multiple Births
- United Kingdom, History of Adoption and Fostering in the
- United States, Schooling in the
- Value of Children
- Views of Childhood, Jewish and Christian
- Violence, Children and
- Visual Representations of Childhood
- Voice, Participation, and Agency
- Vygotsky, Lev and His Cultural-historical Approach to Deve...
- War
- Welfare Law in the United States, Child
- Well-Being, Child
- Western Europe and Scandinavia
- Witchcraft in the Contemporary World, Children and
- Work and Apprenticeship, Children's
- Young Carers
- Young Children’s Imagination
- Young Lives
- Young People, Alcohol, and Urban Life
- Young People and Disadvantaged Environments in Affluent Co...