West African Youth Challenges and Opportunity Pathways

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.

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).