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Digital technologies are part of children's everyday life and increasingly feature within academics’ research practice. The omnipresence of new technologies such as smartphones, tablet computers an...

Fluid interdependencies of mobility—physical and virtual—are growing rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa: The remarkable expansion of mobile phone networks is bringing a tangible new dimension of connectivity into mobility, transport, and access equations on the ground. This article draws on in-depth field research, including co-investigation with two groups often disadvantaged in their physical mobility, youth and older people, to explicate some current African developments and their departure from prevailing Western-based conceptualizations of space–time interactions (regarding the potential for space–time flexibility and microcoordination afforded by mobile phones). Despite the fact that face-to-face interaction is often of great significance in Africa, when the value attached to personalized relationships is balanced against factors of widespread poverty and irregular, sometimes very dangerous transport, the potential for phone substitution appears greater than in many Western contexts. Better distance management through phone use could be particularly closely associated with populations with very low disposable incomes or those whose physical mobility is limited; for instance, by disability, infirmity, age, or gender.

This paper reviews recent transport services research in rural sub-Saharan Africa, with reference to the crucial significance of transport services for reducing poverty and encouraging growth. It focuses on issues key to improved well-being: generation of direct employment, broader economic effects on agricultural and off-farm activities, and social effects regarding health and education. Throughout, the emphasis is on implications for vulnerable groups. Attention is drawn to the potential of recent developments, notably connectivities associated with motorcycle taxis and the rapid expansion of mobile phones. Significant knowledge gaps in the transport services arena are identified, from impacts of climate change, conflict and pedestrian porterage to the economic valuation of transport, village transport operations and road safety. Suggestions are made regarding the type of studies and methods which could help to reduce some of these gaps.

Children are increasingly engaged in the research process as generators of knowledge, but little is known about the impacts on children's lives, especially in the longer term. As part of a study on children's mobility in Ghana, Malawi and South Africa, 70 child researchers received training to conduct peer research in their own communities. Evaluations at the time of the project suggested largely positive impacts on the child researchers: increased confidence, acquisition of useful skills and expanded social networks; however, in some cases, these were tempered with concerns about the effect on schoolwork. In the follow-up interviews 2 years later, several young Ghanaian researchers reported tangible benefits from the research activity for academic work and seeking employment, while negative impacts were largely forgotten. This study highlights the unforeseeable consequences of research participation on children's lives as they unfold in unpredictable ways and underscores the temporal nature of children's...

The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child represented a particularly important way-mark for child-centred studies because it affirmed children's rights to participation: the right to give a...

he penetration of mobile phones into sub-Saharan Africa has occurred with amazing rapidity: for many young people, they now represent a very significant element of their daily life. This paper explores usage and perceived impacts among young people aged c. 9–18 years in three countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. Our evidence comes from intensive qualitative research with young people, their parents, teachers and other key informants (in-depth interviews, focus groups and school essays) and a follow-up questionnaire survey administered to nearly 3000 young people in 24 study sites. The study was conducted in eight different sites in each country (i.e. urban, peri-urban, rural and remote rural sites in each of two agro-ecological zones), enabling comparison of experiences in diverse spatial contexts. The evidence, collected within a broader research study of child mobility, allows us to examine current patterns of usage among young people with particular attention to the way these are emerging in different locational contexts and to explore connections between young people's phone usage, virtual and physical mobilities and broader implications for social change. The issues of gender and inter-generational relations are important elements in this account.

This article is concerned with the implications of practices, politics and meanings of mobility for women and girl children in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Women and girls commonly face severe mobility constraints which affect their livelihoods and their life chances. The article reflects on their experiences in rural areas where patriarchal institutions (including the gender division of labour, which places great emphasis on female labour contributions to household production and reproduction), and a patriarchal discourse concerning linkages between women's mobility, vulnerability and sexual appetite, shape everyday social practices and material inequalities. This compounds the physical constraints imposed by poor accessibility (to services and markets) associated with poor roads and inadequate transport in both direct and more complex ways. The article draws on field research conducted in diverse socio-cultural and agro-ecological contexts in western and southern Africa (principally southern Ghana, southern Malawi and northern and central Nigeria) to explore the impacts of relative immobility and poor service access on women and girls. Three (interconnected) issues are examined in some detail: access to markets, access to education and access to health services. Possible interventions to initiate positive change are considered.

This book offers a careful, considered examination of recent patterns of migration, and their implications for urbanisation and urban population dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa. A highly persuasive ...

This paper draws on mobility research conducted with children in three countries: Ghana, Malawi and South Africa. It has two interlinked aims: to highlight the potential that mobile interviews can offer in research with young people, especially in research contexts where the main focus is on mobility and its impacts, and to contribute empirical evidence regarding the significance of everyday mobility to young people's lives and future life chances in sub-Saharan Africa. During the pilot phase of our research project on children, transport and mobility, the authors undertook walks home from school with teenage children1 in four different research sites: three remote rural, one peri-urban. As the children walked (usually over a distance of around 5 km) their stories of home, of school and of the environment in-between, gradually unfolded. The lived experiences narrated during these journeys offer considerable insights into the daily lives, fears and hopes of the young people concerned, and present a range of issues for further research as our study extends into its main phase.

This paper explores involving children in Malawi in research about young people, mobility and transport, respecting their rights of participation, education, and protection from exploitation. The Malawi study forms one component of a research project taking place in three sub-Saharan African countries. A foundation of the larger project was the conviction that children are experts on their own lives; therefore seeking children's views was essential, thus respecting the UNCRC. We also embraced an ethical approach, that ‘the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration’. We reflect on challenges in putting ethical principles into practice in the inevitably messy real-world.

This article examines the prospects for agricultural development and rural transformation in Transkei, one of the largest of the former homelands of South Africa. In view of Transkei's size, its substantial population and largely rural character, an understanding of its current problems and potential are extremely important in any assessment of agricultural prospects in the former homelands. The discussion draws on published research and on the authors’ own fieldwork after the April 1994 elections. Some of the most intractable problems facing the Government of National Unity currently lie in the former homelands, which were starved of investment under apartheid. The article reviews patterns of peasant production and commercial agriculture (including contract farming) in Transkei and attempts to set current issues concerning land, labour (including the role of women and children), inputs and infrastructural provision within a national and international context. The article begins by briefly setting the nat...

This article explores relationships and tensions on a sugar contract farming scheme in the former homeland of Transkei, just after the elections which returned Transkei constitutionally to South Africa. Company, outgrower and labour perceptions of current issues are presented. The relevance of the findings for the debates about contract farming in Africa and about land in South Africa is considered. The study firstly emphasises the complexity of the land issue even in the former homelands of South Africa and, secondly, shows the importance of examining contract schemes in their totality; to base evaluation on the outgrower component alone is insufficient.