1. Education for All: The Case of Out of School Migrants in Ghana; Daniel Kyereko
2. Irregular Migration as Survival Strategy: Narratives from Vulnerable Youth in Urban Nigeria; Lanre Olusegun Ikuteyijo
3. Untold Stories: Newark’s Burgeoning West African Population and the In-School Experiences of African Immigrant Youth; Michael Simmons and Mahako Etta
4. Police-Youth Relations: On the Ground Perspectives from Nigeria´s Federal Capital; Samuel Oluwole Ojewale
5. "To become somebody in the future": Exploring the Content of Youth Aspirations in Urban Nigeria; Dabesaki Mac-Ikemenjima
6. Someone has to tell these children: You can be as good as anybody!; Cecilia Fiaka
7. The Limits of Individual Level Factors for Girls Achievement in Ghana and South Africa; Sally A. Nuamah
8. Youth Employment and Labour Market Vulnerability in Ghana: Aggregate Trends and Determinants; Adedeji Adeniran, Adekunle Yusuf, and Joseph Ishaku
9. The Role of “eTrash2Cash” in Curbing the Menace of “Almajiri” Vulnerability in Nigeria through Waste Management Social Micro-entrepreneurship; Alh. Muhammad Salisu Abdullahi
10. Burden, Drivers, and Impacts of Poor Mental Health in Young People of West and Central Africa: Implications for Research and Programming; Kenneth Juma, Frederick Wekesah, Boniface Ushie, Caroline W. Kabiru, and Chimaraoke Izugbara
Mora L. McLean is a researcher, writer, part-time university lecturer, and President Emerita of the Africa-America Institute (AAI). As a Senior Fellow with the Cornwall Center at Rutgers University-Newark, she was principal investigator for the Ford Foundation-supported 2017 Forum on West African Youth Learning and Opportunity Pathways. Her published essays include “What about the reciprocity? Pan-Africanism and the promise of global development,” in M.O. Okome & O. Vaughan’s Transnational Africa and Globalization (Palgrave, 2012).
This open access edited collection explores obstacles that impede, and potential pathways toward improving, the material and psychological well-being of youth in and from West Africa. Contributors range from researchers to practitioners, offering a transatlantic, transcontinental set of perspectives on the mounting evidence that, whether they reside in poor “underdeveloped” or wealthier (OECD) countries, young people who live in poverty and are African-born or of African descent are disproportionately burdened by the global phenomenon of increasing income inequality.
Mora McLean is Co-Adjutant in the Office of the Chancellor and Office of Globally Engaged Experiential Learning at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA.