West African Youth Challenges And Opportunity Pathways

This open-access edited collection, focusing on Ghana and Nigeria, offers a transatlantic, transnational exploration of barriers that threaten the wellbeing of West African youth—ranging from Black immigrant youth in the American city of Newark, New Jersey, to students in Almajiri Islamic schools in Northern Nigeria. Incorporating themes of migration, vulnerability, and agency and aspirations, the book conveys the resilience of African youth transitioning toward adulthood in a world of structural inequality. It thus crosses the academic divide between Youth Studies and African Studies, while challenging conventional framings of Black youth as deficient and deviant—positing instead their individual and collective creativity and assets. The contributors employ different methodological approaches, including field research and autoethnography, from varying multidisciplinary and practitioner perspectives.

This open-access edited collection, focusing on Ghana and Nigeria, offers a transatlantic, transnational exploration of barriers that threaten the wellbeing of West African youth-ranging from Black immigrant youth in the American city of Newark, New Jersey, to students in Almajiri Islamic schools in Northern Nigeria. Incorporating themes of migration, vulnerability, and agency and aspirations, the book conveys the resilience of African youth transitioning toward adulthood in a world of structural inequality. It thus crosses the academic divide between Youth Studies and African Studies, while challenging conventional framings of Black youth as deficient and deviant-positing instead their individual and collective creativity and assets. The contributors employ different methodological approaches, including field research and autoethnography, from varying multidisciplinary and practitioner perspectives. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This open-access edited collection, focusing on Ghana and Nigeria, offers a transatlantic, transnational exploration of barriers that threaten the wellbeing of West African youth—ranging from Black immigrant youth in the American city of Newark, New Jersey, to students in Almajiri Islamic schools in Northern Nigeria. Incorporating themes of migration, vulnerability, and agency and aspirations, the book conveys the resilience of African youth transitioning toward adulthood in a world of structural inequality. It thus crosses the academic divide between Youth Studies and African Studies, while challenging conventional framings of Black youth as deficient and deviant—positing instead their individual and collective creativity and assets. The contributors employ different methodological approaches, including field research and autoethnography, from varying multidisciplinary and practitioner perspectives.

This book discusses the phenomenon of regional integration in Africa and the ensuing discourse on the intercontinental free trade agreement within the continent. Long before the move for the facilitation of free trade in Africa, freedom of movement by Africans within Africa backed up by the AU Protocol on free movement of persons has been in existence and in one way or the other both moves are closely related. The book explores the existing relationships between the ECOWAS Protocol on free movement, goods and services and AfCFTA on one hand and the impact of the implementation and non-implementation of these policies on West Africa on the other hand.

Global estimates show over half a billion people go hungry (FAO, 2020) and close to 2 billion people are either obese or overweight with another 2 billion of the world’s population suffering from micronutrient deficiencies (Micha et al., 2020, Fresco et al., 2017). Inarguably, the world faces significant malnutrition problem (including micro- and macro-nutrient deficiencies, obesity, and diet related non-communicable diseases). This is evident in a recent analysis pointing out that effort in achieving the Global Nutrition Targets is likely to be missed. The observed malnutrition threat is accompanied by climate change, which is influencing food production and consumption trends, and thereby leading to undernutrition and affecting overall development. In addition, there are growing incomes, accelerated urbanization, and expanding middle classes which are also causing significant changes in consumer behaviour and nutritional choices, necessitating both public and private expenditures for better food market integration. As a result, there is a pressing need to examine our food systems to guarantee food and nutrition security and to advance sustainable development. It is likely that the COVID-19 impact may further exacerbates the worsening food insecurity and nutritional status of the most vulnerable groups including women, children and adolescents, refugees and displaced people, smallholders in rural areas, and the urban poor.

"Argonauts of West Africa examines the paradoxes of kinship in the lives of unauthorized African migrants as they struggle for mobility, employment, and citizenship in Europe. In a rapidly changing and highly precarious context, migrants turn to kinship in search of security, stability, and predictability. Through the exchange of identity documents, assistance in obtaining such documentation, marriage, or cohabitation, new kinship dynamics are continually made and remade to navigate the shifting demands of European states. These new kinship relations, however, often prove unreliable, taking on new, unexpected dynamics in the face of codependency; they become more difficult to control than those who entered into such relations could have imagined. Through unusually close ethnographic work in West African migrant communities in Amsterdam, Apostolos Andrikopoulos reveals unseen dynamics of "siblinghood" through shared papers, the tensions of race and gender that develop in mutually beneficial marriages, and the vast, informal networks of people, information, and documentation on which migrants rely. Throughout, Andrikopoulos demonstrates how inequality, exclusionary practices, and the changing policies of an often-violent state demand new forms of kinship to successfully navigate complex migration routes"--

This edited volume examines the contemporary practice of human trafficking on the African continent. It investigates the scourge of human trafficking in Africa from the broader international and regional perspectives as well as from a country-specific context. Written by a multi-disciplinary panel of academics and practitioners, the book is divided into three sections that highlight a wide range of issues. Section One examines the theoretical and legal challenges of trafficking. Section Two focuses on the regional and nation-state perspectives of human trafficking along with selected cases of trafficking. Section Three highlights the impact of trafficking on youth, with specific attention given to child soldiering and female victims of trafficking. Providing a multi-faceted approach to a problem that crosses multiple disciplines, this volume will be useful to scholars and students interested in African politics, African studies, migration, human rights, sociology, law, and economics as well as members of the diplomatic corps, governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organizations.

This handbook provides an authoritative and comprehensive overview of African population dynamics, variations, causes and consequences, demonstrating the real-world applications of research in policies and programmes. African demography has come of age. Over 50 years, the discipline has grown exponentially in the number of training and research institutions, specialist experts and academic output, all with an aim of addressing the enormous demographic challenges faced by the continent. The book draws on old and emerging analytical tools to explore the relationships between population dynamics and social, economic, cultural and political environments from African perspectives. Key topics include fertility, sexual behaviours, healthcare, ageing, mortality, migration, displacement, the causes and consequences of demographic changes and teaching and research developments in African demography. The Routledge Handbook of African Demography will be an essential resource for students and researchers of African demography, sociology, development and cultural studies.