June 17-18, 2026

This article explores the lived experiences of street-connected youth in African cities, highlighting the multiple socio-economic challenges they face alongside their resilience in navigating daily survival. Drawing on focus groups across three cities, it reconceptualizes resilience as a dynamic, context-driven process shaped by social, institutional, and environmental factors, with implications for policy and practice.

This qualitative study examines the drivers, progress, and ongoing challenges in addressing child trafficking in Ghana, drawing on interviews with 80 stakeholders across government, civil society, and affected communities. It finds that while policy and institutional advances have been made, persistent issues such as weak enforcement, limited coordination, and underlying drivers like poverty and migration require stronger, better-resourced, and more survivor-centred responses.

This AP article describes how Nigerian troops rescued seven children and two women who had been kidnapped during an attack on an orphanage in Kogi State in April 2026.

This study explores how kinship lineage and inheritance norms in Ghana influence decisions about placing children in the care of maternal or paternal grandmothers. While traditionally significant, findings suggest these norms are weakening due to legal reforms, social change, and interethnic marriages, with limited influence on most contemporary kinship care arrangements.

This qualitative study explores the experiences of street children in Benin City, Nigeria, finding that family breakdown, poverty, abuse, and lack of parental care are key drivers of children leaving home. It shows that once on the streets, children adopt various survival strategies, including informal labor, begging, crime, and substance use, and calls for coordinated government and community action to strengthen families and support reintegration.

This study examines the challenges of deinstitutionalization (DI) in Ghana, particularly for child trafficking survivors, highlighting how structural, socio-cultural, and economic factors hinder safe reintegration into family-based care. It finds that while policies promote alternatives to institutional care, effective DI requires sustained investment in community services, poverty reduction, and trauma-informed support to prevent re-trafficking and ensure long-term child well-being.

This study examines the disconnect between Ghana’s child protection laws and their implementation, arguing that the gap stems from tensions between global rights-based frameworks and local, duty-oriented cultural practices rather than resource limitations. It proposes a hybrid governance approach that aligns formal legal systems with traditional kinship structures and promotes culturally responsive practice to strengthen child protection outcomes.

This study examines institutional care policy and operations in Nigeria using a qualitative literature review, with a focus on how children’s rights frameworks shape child welfare practices. The study concludes that institutions can be improved to be comparable to family living but they should be the last resort.

This article tells the story of Nigerian missionaries Olusola and Chinwe Stevens, who have spent three decades rescuing babies and young children in central Nigeria from harmful traditional beliefs that label them as “cursed” and sometimes lead to