Young people's use of mobile phones is expanding exponentially across Africa. Its transformative potential is exciting, but findings presented in this paper indicate how the downside of mobile phone use in African schools is becoming increasingly apparent. Drawing on mixed-methods field research in 24 sites across Ghana, Malawi and South Africa and associated discussions with educational institutions, public policy makers and network providers, we examine the current state of play and offer suggestions towards a more satisfactory alignment of practice and policy which promotes the more positive aspects of phone use in educational contexts and militates against more damaging ones.

This paper examines connectedness to, communication with and monitoring of unmarried adolescents in Ghana by parents, other adults, friends and key social institutions and the roles these groups play with respect to adolescent sexual activity. The paper draws on 2004 nationallyrepresentative survey data and qualitative evidence from focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with adolescents in 2003. Adolescents show high levels of connectedness to family, adults, friends, school and religious groups. High levels of adult monitoring are also observed, but communication with family about sex-related matters was not as high as with non-family members. The qualitative data highlight gender differences in communication. Multivariate analysis of survey data shows a strong negative relationship between parental monitoring and recent sexual activity for males and females, and limited effects of communication. Creating a supportive environment and showing interest in the welfare of adolescents appear to promote positive sexual and reproductive health outcomes.

(2012) 'Youth, mobility and mobile phones in Africa : ndings from a three-country study.', Information technology for development., 18 (2). pp. 145-162. Further information on publisher's website: Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

Delivering in health facility under the supervision of skilled birth attendant is an important way of mitigating impacts of delivery complications. Empirical evidence suggests that decision-making autonomy is aligned with holistic wellbeing especially in the aspect of maternal and child health. The objective of this paper was to examine the relationship between women's health decision-making autonomy and place of delivery in Ghana. We extracted data from the 2014 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey. Descriptive and logistic regression techniques were applied. The results indicated that women with health decision-making autonomy have higher tendency of health facility delivery as compared to those who are not autonomous [OR = 1.27, CI = 1.09–1.48]. However, those who have final say on household large purchases [OR = 0.71, CI = 0.59–0.84] and those having final say on visits [OR = 0.86, CI = 0.73–1.01] were less probable to deliver in health facility than those without such decision-making autonomy. Consistent with existing evidence, wealthier, urban, and highly educated women had higher inclination of health facility delivery. This study has stressed the need for interventions aimed at enhancing health facility delivery to target women without health decision-making autonomy and women with low education and wealth status, as this can play essential role in enhancing health facility delivery.

This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Geoforum. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A denitive version was subsequently published in Porter, G., Hampshire, K., Abane, A., Robson, E., Munthali, A., Mashiri, M. and Tanle, A. (2010) 'Moving young lives : mobility, immobility and inter-generational tensions in urban Africa.', Geoforum., 41 (5). pp. 796-804, doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.05.001 Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. In the story we present in this paper, mobility -as experience, opportunity, challenge, temptation and performance -plays a key role.Mobility and immobility, we argue, are key factors shaping young people's urban experience and their future life chances across sub-Saharan Africa. For young people, mobility achieved may, on the one hand, be a source of excitement, temptation, thrills, inclusion, opportunity and perceived success; on the other, a cause of exhaustion, danger and fear. Mobility frustrated, by contrast, is most often seen purely in negative terms: a source of anger, despair, exclusion and perceived failure. In this paper we focus on mobilities in the everyday -daily journeys to school, work, church, the market and video house, to meet friends, relations, lovers, teachers, business operators. The more extensive mobilities of migration from the distant village or another country are largely outside our 2 frame. Our principal aim is to chart young people's mobility experiences -how they use and experience the city -developing a comparative perspective across the three urban study sites that links young people's mobility with the power relations which operate to shape their movements in individual locations. In particular, we consider how positive and negative images of young people's mobility play out in terms of the intergenerational frictions and negotiations generated by their mobility performances within local cultural settings. We also reflect on the developmental consequences of mobility achieved and mobility frustrated, in terms of young people's access to services and income and their participation in the social networks and peer culture which may shape their life trajectories. This requires us to consider how factors such as gender and age intersect with specific local conditions (ec...