Routledge Handbook of Children's Rights in Africa

The Routledge Handbook of Children’s Rights in Africa provides a comprehensive exploration of contemporary research on children’s rights within diverse African contexts.

It documents and analyses the challenges affecting African children’s well‑being while also highlighting innovative continental solutions. This book seeks to reframe the children’s rights discourse by prioritising African scholarship and perspectives, centring African philosophical traditions, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) as a philosophically significant instrument in its own right, and bridging theoretical contributions with practical case studies from across different cultural, social, and political landscapes. Challenges such as educational access, exploitation risks, climate change impacts, digital vulnerabilities, changing family structures, and post‑pandemic realities are all explored. However, this book goes beyond problem identification to showcase successful interventions in areas such as culturally sensitive child protection, education, ethical technologies, and community‑based and grassroots approaches to policy change, among others.

Authoritative, yet accessible, this important handbook will be an essential resource for advanced students and researchers across the fields of law, sociology, anthropology, psychology, development studies, and African studies, as well as for practitioners and
policymakers seeking to improve the effectiveness of their interventions and chart directions for a post‑SDG children’s rights framework.

Clement Chipenda is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of South Africa’s College of Graduate Studies, where he contributes his expertise to the South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Social Policy. He is a co‑investigator in the research project ‘The Social Policy Dimensions of Land and Agrarian Reform in International Perspective’ and in ‘Social Policy in the Post‑COVID‑19 Pandemic Era: Investigating a Transformative and Gender‑Sensitive Framework in South Africa’ as well as ‘Gender‑Transformative Pathways to Climate Resilience in Zimbabwe’s Resettlement Areas: A Social Policy Perspective.’ His research interests span a diverse yet interconnected range of topics, including agrarian political economy, agro‑food systems, transformative social policy, children’s rights and child protection, social security, urban and rural sociology, and youth and gender studies.

Musavengana W.T. Chibwana is a seasoned Child Rights and Social Policy expert with more than 20 years’ experience. He has worked with agencies such as Higher Life Foundation, UN Women, Progressio, Save the Children, and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child Secretariat, where he managed the portfolio for children affected by armed conflicts. He is the founding chairperson of the Child Rights Network for Southern Africa (CRNSA), the regional network he was instrumental in forming and establishing. He holds a PhD in Development Studies, majoring in Social Policy; a Master of Philosophy in Children’s Rights; a BA Honours in Development Studies; a Diploma in Personnel Management; and several professional certificates, including one in international humanitarian law (IHL). He is a research fellow at the Centre for Gender and Africa Studies at the University of Free State in South Africa. He has published several articles on children’s rights in Africa.

Robert Doya Nanima is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Department of Criminal Justice and Procedure at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Before entering academia, he served as a prosecutor with Uganda’s Directorate of Public Prosecutions for nine years. A prolific scholar and conference presenter, Professor Nanima serves on the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) as the Special Rapporteur on Children Affected by Armed Conflict, the Chairperson of the Working Group on Implementation of Decisions, and a member of the Working Group on Children’s Rights and Climate Change. He is also the Country Rapporteur for Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi, Namibia, and Eswatini. He was the lead consultant on the General Comment on Article 22 on Children in Conflict Situations and supported the development of the ACERWC Model Law on Children Affected by Armed Conflict. As the technical lead of the African Platform for Children Affected by Armed Conflict, he engages with key bodies, including the UN, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. He has shaped global conversations on this issue with Global Affairs Canada, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the UK’s Wilton Park, and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research.