About this ebook
Challenging colonial discourses, this edited volume guides the reader through different comprehensions and perspectives of childhood in Africa. Using a blend of theory, empiricism and history, the contributors to this volume offer studies from a range of fields including African literature, Afro-centric psychology and sociology. Importantly, in its eclectic geographical coverage of Africa, this book unashamedly presents the good, the bad and the ugly of African childhood.
The resilience, creativity, pains and triumphs of African childhood are skilfully woven together to present the myriad of lived experiences and aspirations of children from across Africa. As an important contribution to African childhood studies, this book has the potential to be used by policymakers to shape, sustain or change socio-cultural, economic and education systems that accommodate African childhood dynamics and experiences at different levels.
About the author
De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway (PhD) is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana. His research and teaching interests are the history of Black Religious and Cultural Nationalism(s), African Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Children in Popular Culture, Regionalism and Integration in Africa, and Africans in Dispersion. He has authored books and several articles in different refereed journals and books. He co-authored ‘Freaks in Procession? Fancy Dress Masquerade as a Haven for Negotiating Eccentricity during Childhood. A Study of Child Masqueraders in Cape Coast’ in Misfit Children: An Enquiry into Childhood Belongings and co-edited the book Africa and the First World War: Remembrance,
Memories and Representations after 100 Years. He also edits three journals––Drumspeak, Asemka and Abibisem––at UCC, and belongs to the Historical Society of Ghana.