Values of Children and Childhood in Africa

This panel brings together papers on understandings, values and lived experiences of children and families in Africa. Four panel contributors approach the values that underpin the role of children, and the meaning childhood is given to in diverse settings and contexts of Ethiopia and Zambia. Values are conceptualized here as moral and ideological viewpoints around childhood that are embedded in material social practices, and complex ways in which children themselves contribute to processes of daily and generational reproduction. Among other topics, the panel explores how family collectives set social, moral, economic, and cultural expectations on children and the ways in which these expectations shape the place of children in families and communities: in mitigating household poverty, in intergenerational relationships, care and nurturance. The perspectives drawn from individual presentations will have important implications to rethink issues around children’s agency, interdependent family relations, social expectations, as well as values and valuations of children’s rights in the context of social change in Africa. The panel is organized as part of the initiatives of Nordic Network of African Childhood and Youth Research (NoNACYR) and financially supported by NordForsk.