Education and Work: Children’s Lives in Rural Sub‑Saharan Africa

Abstract

This paper proposes a dynamic conceptual framework – the edu-workscape – for understanding how rural children in sub-Saharan Africa navigate three key gendered social arenas: the household, school and workplaces. Focusing on school, in particular, the paper highlights the violence, harm and labour that occur there, and argues that learning, work and harm co-exist across all three institutional domains, and in context, and should therefore be considered holistically.

Interactions between Child Labour and Schooling: Parental Perceptions in Rural and Urban Ghana

“…The results of my analysis present evidence that work and schooling are incompatible activities for school-going children in urban Ghana. This assertion is reinforced by other scholars (Guarcello et al, 2015;Churchill et al, 2021;Dunne et al, 2021). In development-policy discussions, scholars have expressed concerns about the impacts of child labour on schooling in addition to current debates on the welfare impacts of labour-intensive development intensified by trade liberalisation.…”

“…In development-policy discussions, scholars have expressed concerns about the impacts of child labour on schooling in addition to current debates on the welfare impacts of labour-intensive development intensified by trade liberalisation. The debate on the poverty trap significantly hinges on the replacement potentials between children's leisure and education (Dunne et al, 2021). There is evidence of increasing adverse effect of poverty on the schooling of children.…”

“…There is current discussion on whether combining schooling and work is helpful or destroys children's opportunities. Dunne et al (2021) observe that the interactions between work and schooling are multi-dimensional, complex, and usually context-specific. The engagement of children in work is one of the key barriers to Education for All (EFA) which is a global initiative first launched at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990 by United Nations and its affiliate bodies (Guarcello et al, 2015).…”