NCJ Number
220468
Journal
Journal of Adolescent Health Volume: 41 Issue: 3 Dated: September 2007 Pages: 230-238
Date Published
September 2007
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This review focuses on three central domains in the lives of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): education, family formation, and sexual/reproductive health, and explores the trends and factors influencing these domains.
Abstract
Youth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are experiencing rapid social change, with fewer resources than the rest of either the developing or industrialized world. Child survival has allowed more young people to emerge into adolescence; however, in SSA, these youth are poorer, have less education, have more rapid population growth, have higher maternal mortality, have greater HIV prevalence, and have fewer vocational options than anywhere in the world. The population of SSA doubles nearly every 30 years. The region continues to be characterized by such deficiencies as a political landscape dominated by civil war, corruption, and totalitarian regimes; the educationally disadvantaged adolescent population in the world; and more deaths from HIV than in the rest of the world combined. Youth in SSA are living in complex and, for many, rapidly changing societies. SSA refers to the 42 of the 52 countries on the African continent located south of the Sahara Desert. As traditions yield to new global forces, social disruption occurs; and social disruption is what characterizes much of life today for youth in SSA. Social disruption presents as interpersonal violence and/or institutional corruption. It presents as rural to urban migration and with it the deterioration of traditional social structures and the rise of urban unemployment, poverty, and commercial sex. Social disruption also presents in the changes in male and female relationships, parent and child relationships, and husband and wife relationships. The review is based on both published research and unpublished documents of governments in SSA. Tables, references