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.
Introduction; Mora Mclean.- 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.
