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Africa's Future, Africa's Challenge compiles the latest data and viewpoints on the state of Sub-Saharan Africa's children. Topics covered include the rationale for investing in young children, policy trends in early childhood development (ECD), historical perspectives of ECD in Sub-Saharan Africa including indigenous approaches, new threats from HIV/AIDS, and the importance of fathers in children's lives. The book also addresses policy development and ECD implementation issues; presents the ECD programming experience in several countries, highlighting best practices and challenges; and evaluates the impact of ECD programs in a number of countries.

In this volume, African scholars engaged in research on the continent reflect on their recent and ongoing empirical studies. They discuss the strengths and limitations of research methods, theories, and interventions designed outside Africa to spur innovative research on the continent. And they explore how insights from African philosophical, theoretical, and empirical work can be combined with exogenous forms of knowledge to generate understanding of the processes of African children's development in ways that are responsive to local contexts and meaningful for indigenous stakeholders. A new field of African child development research is emerging in African societies, focusing on children as valued and vulnerable members of society and potential civic leaders of the future. Systematic inquiries are now designed to enhance our understanding of how African children think, to discover effective ways of communicating with them, and to inform successful strategies of promoting their health, education, and preparation for adult responsibilities in society. This is the 146th volume in this Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. Its mission is to provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edge issues and concepts in this subject area. Each volume focuses on a specific new direction or research topic and is edited by experts from that field.

This book offers policy options that can help reduce textbook costs and increase their supply. The book explores, in depth, the cost and financial barriers that restrict textbook availability in schools across much of the region, as well as policies successfully adapted in other countries. The book also provides a thorough assessment of the pros and cons of digital teaching and learning materials and cautions against the assumption that they can immediately replace printed textbooks.

'Developing Science, Mathematics and ICT in Secondary Education' is based on country studies from ten Sub-Saharan African countries: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, and a literature review. It reveals a number of huge challenges in science, mathematics and ICT (SMICT) education in sub-Saharan Africa: poorly-resourced schools; large classes; a curriculum hardly relevant to the daily lives of students; a lack of qualified teachers; and inadequate teacher education programs. Through examining country case studies, this paper discusses the lessons for improvement of SMICT in secondary education in Africa.

Africa's Future, Africa's Challenge compiles the latest data and viewpoints on the state of Sub-Saharan Africa's children. Topics covered include the rationale for investing in young children, policy trends in early childhood development (ECD), historical perspectives of ECD in Sub-Saharan Africa including indigenous approaches, new threats from HIV/AIDS, and the importance of fathers in children's lives. The book also addresses policy development and ECD implementation issues; presents the ECD programming experience in several countries, highlighting best practices and challenges; and evaluates the impact of ECD programs in a number of countries.

High fertility and declining mortality rates have led to a very young population in most Sub-Saharan African countries. The region’s labor force is expected to increase by 11 million people per year over the next 10 years. Most of this increase will be new entrants seeking their first job. While the younger generation is better educated than their parents, they often lack the means to translate that education into productive employment. Today, most work is in nonwage jobs on farms and in household enterprises. Even if greater economic activity were to create the conditions for robust growth and economic transformation, the private modern wage sector in low- and lower-middle-income countries could not absorb all the applicants. This report focuses on how to improve the quality of all jobs and to meet the aspirations of youth. It emphasizes that building a strong foundation for human capital development can play an important role in boosting earnings, and it argues that a balanced approach focused on building skills, raising productivity, and increasing the demand for labor is necessary. Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa notes that many youth employment challenges are problems of employment in general. However, youth is a time of transition, and young people face particular constraints to accessing productive work. The report brings together original analysis of household and labor force surveys; it reviews the experience of a number of promising interventions across the continent; it draws from qualitative studies in several countries; and it surveys the most up-to-date evidence from rigorous evaluations of policies and programs. From this information base, the report provides guidance to policy makers on how to intervene along two dimensions―human capital and the business environment―and in three priority areas―agriculture, household enterprises, and the modern wage sector. The ultimate goals are to increase productivity, improve livelihoods, and multiply opportunities for young people.

The papers in this volume examine the links between gender, time use, and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. They contribute to a broader definition of poverty to include “time poverty,” and to a broader definition of work to include household work. The papers present a conceptual framework linking both market and household work, review some of the available literature and surveys on time use in Africa, and use tools and approaches drawn from analysis of consumption-based poverty to develop the concept of a time poverty line and to examine linkages between time poverty, consumption poverty, and other dimensions of development in Africa such as education and child labor.

Accelerating education sector responses to HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa. This report examines the education sector's role in preventing HIV/AIDS and supporting affected communities. It's for educators, policymakers, and development professionals seeking effective strategies. Discover five years of experience in Sub-Saharan Africa, revealing successful approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention in schools. Learn how to implement policies, train teachers, and engage communities. Understand how coordinated efforts and resource allocation can create sustainable education programs, offering hope and empowerment to future generations. This is a crucial resource for building a stronger, healthier future.

Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa (\"Africa\") stood at 5.1 births per woman in 2005-10 (United Nations 2011), more than double the replacement level. This high fertility combined with declining mortality has resulted in rapid population growth--2.5 percent per year--and the UN projects the sub-Saharan population to grow from 0.86 billion in 2010 to 1.96 billion in 2050 and 3.36 billion in 2100. Such unprecedented expansion of human numbers creates a range of social, economic, and environmental challenges and makes it more difficult for the continent to raise living standards. Hence the growing interest in demographic trends in Africa among policymakers.

We study how aggregate economic conditions affect the timing of marriage, and particularly child marriage, in Sub-Saharan Africa and in India. In both regions, substantial monetary or in-kind transfers occur with marriage: bride price across Sub-Saharan Africa and dowry in India. In a simple equilibrium model of the marriage market in which parents choose when their children marry, income shocks affect the age of marriage because marriage payments are a source of consumption smoothing, particularly for a woman’s family. As predicted by our model, we show that droughts, which reduce annual crop yields by 10 to 15% and aggregate income by 4 to 5%, have opposite effects on the marriage behavior of a sample of 400,000 women in the two regions: in Sub-Saharan Africa they increase the annual hazard into child marriage by 3%, while in India droughts reduce such a hazard by 4%. Changes in the age of marriage due to droughts are associated with changes in fertility, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, and with declines in observed marriage payments. Our results indicate that the age of marriage responds to short-term changes in aggregate economic conditions and that marriage payments determine the sign of this response. This suggests that, in order to design successful policies to combat child marriage and improve investments in daughters’ human capital, it is crucial to understand the economic role of marriage market institutions.