Child development in Africa
Child development in Africa addresses the variables and social changes that occur in African children from infancy through adolescence. Three complementary lines of scholarship have sought to generate knowledge about child development in Africa, specifically rooted in endogenous, African ways of knowing: analysis of traditional proverbs, theory-building, and documentation of parental ethno-theories. The first approach has examined the indigenous formulations of child development and socialisation values embedded in African languages and oral traditions. Several collections of proverbs have been published in different African languages, and their content has been analysed to show the recurrence of the themes of shared communal responsibility for children's moral guidance and the importance of providing it early in life. Nsamenang's view The African social ontogeny proposed by Nsamenang is phrased within an eco-cultural perspective, and draws from writings by African scholars in philosophy and the humanities. This theory explains a shared worldview among diverse ethnic groups, based on rigorous observational research and personal experiences of the rural Nso community’s socialisation practices, in Cameroon. The process of social development unfolds in seven phases, each characterised by specific developmental tasks. In the initial phase, known as the naming ceremony, the desired socialised identity for a neonate is