West African Youth Challenges and Opportunity Pathways

GENDER AND CULTURAL STUDIES IN AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA West African Youth Challenges and Opportunity Pathways Edited by Mora L. McLean Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora Series Editor Oyeronke Oyewumi Bayonne, NJ, USA This book series spotlights the experiences of Africans on the continent and in its multiple and multilayered diasporas. Its objective is to make available publications that focus on people of African descent wherever they are located, ratgeting innovative research that derives questions, con- cepts, and theories from historical and contemporary experiences. The broad scope of the series includes gender scholarship as well as studies that engage with culture in all its complexities. From a variety of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary orientations, these studies engage current debates, address urgent questions, and open up new perspectives in African knowledge production. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14996 Mora L. McLean Editor West African Youth Challenges and Opportunity Pathways Editor Mora L. McLean Rutgers University-Newark Newark, NJ, USA Gender and Cultural Studies in Africa and the Diaspora ISBN 978-3-030-21091-5 ISBN 978-3-030-21092-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21092-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu- tional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland PREFACE This book is a result of a transatlantic, transnational collaboration that brought together researchers and practitioners who focus on youth in and from West Africa. The collaboration, dubbed the Forum on Expanding Youth Learning and Opportunity Pathways in, and Linked to, West Africa (the Forum), facilitated the sharing of research and practical approaches with potential applicability across the multiple and varied geographic spaces that African and African-descendant youth occupy. The Association for Research on Civil Society in Africa (AROCSA) and Rutgers University- Newark issued a joint call for proposals in the winter of 2016, which was followed up in April of 2017 with a small convening at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) in Legon. The event was co-sponsored by the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) Department of Public Administration and Health Services Management, the Rutgers University- Newark Graduate School, and Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies. A second gathering, designed as a workshop for this book’s contributing authors, took place in Accra in October of 2018. The Forum explicitly aspired toward transcending the boundaries of academic disciplines, theory and practice, and geography—an impossibly demanding set of goals, given impetus by a sense of urgency to advance two overarching concerns: First, the Forum organizers perceived a need to bring theory and practice to bear on the topic simultaneously, by bringing academic researchers and scholars in closer dialogue with practitioners affiliated with youth-focused nongovernmental nonprofit organizations. Second, the organizers also envisioned the Forum as a vehicle for spurring new research on youthhood experiences and exploration of practical v vi PREFACE approaches, with potential applicability in and outside the West Africa region, especially in the United States. The Forum fell short of its ambitious agenda in several key respects. The call for proposals did not account sufficiently for language barriers, so that the Forum did not draw participants from Francophone and Lusophone West Africa. Also missing were scholars, activists, and practitioners whose work centered on youth with disabilities and youth with LGBTQ identities. The organizers also grossly underestimated the com- plexity and difficulty of bridging the gap between praxis and theory. However, three intended features of the Forum endured and reflected in this collection. First, it sheds light on data, analyses, and insights provided by researchers, activists, and practitioners spanning multiple academic disciplines and both the nonprofit nongovernmental organization (NGO) and for-profit business sectors. Second, while there are hints of the enduring developmentalist framework that tends to serve as the dominant justification for examining issues pertaining to African youth (most nota- bly in multilateral institution studies and reports), on the whole, the collection avoids approaching its subject from a development vantage point. The third feature is the purposeful examination of comparisons with, and linkages to, youth in continental and “New World” diasporas, within and outside West Africa—specifically the Central African region, South Africa, and the postindustrial City of Newark, New Jersey in the northeastern United States. The book aims to reach a wide audience, including policy- makers, while increasing the scholarly appetite for more research-praxis exchange and comparative research on youth in Africa and in the African diaspora. The contributing authors come from a variety of backgrounds, including academia and research and public policy, social justice activism, and business entrepreneurship. When the Forum was launched, most of the researchers and scholars in the group were at early stages in their academic and professional careers. This was another distinctive feature of the Forum, which aimed to provide a platform for lesser-known and new voices. The majority of the contributors originate from, or are based in, West Africa. The authors share an abiding interest in understanding the factors that impede the social mobility and well-being of youth and finding ways to address and remove those barriers. Newark, NJ Mora L. McLean ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This edited collection, and the convening of practitioners and scholars that inspired it (the Forum), were made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation. I am grateful not only for the foundation’s financial support, but also for the encouragement and insightful feedback provided through- out the project journey by Innocent Chukwuma and Dabesaki Mac- Ikemenjima of the foundation’s West Africa office in Lagos. I am especially grateful to the Rutgers University-Newark community, which enabled both the book and activities surrounding it, in the first instance. Enormous thanks are due to Irene O’Brien, who appreciated my calling and intellectual commitment to work in the borderlands between local and global inequality, and thanks also to Kyle Farmbry and Oliver Quinn, who entrusted me to lead the project that yielded this book. The transatlantic discussions and essential hands-on collaboration involved along the way simply would not have happened without Kimaada Sills, Mahako Etta, and Michael Simmons, my fellow project team members. They embraced the project vision from the outset, helped to fine tune it, and undertook the organizational tasks, big and small, to realize its transi- tion from a mere idea to a concrete initiative. Kimaada Sills is in a league of her own: she maintained deft oversight of the project administration from inception to completion. I owe her and Irene Welch a special debt of gratitude for skillfully managing the intricate travel arrangements and other logistics that, on two separate occasions, brought together participants from four countries and two continents. The project benefited tremendously from input from Rutgers University- Newark graduate students: Alice Benishyaka contributed yeowoman vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS service at the inaugural project gathering in Accra, Lauren Kaplan and Mi Hyun Yoon helped to research the literature, and Yvan Yenda weighed in insightfully on the project design. Three other key members of the broader Rutgers University network gave me confidence that the idea for the Forum was feasible and worth pursuing. Kevin

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