Introduction; Mora Mclean -- 1. Education for All: The Case of Out of School Migrants in Ghana; Daniel Kyereko -- 2. Irregular Migration as Survival Strategy: Narratives from Vulnerable Youth in Urban Nigeria; Lanre Olusegun Ikuteyijo -- 3. Untold Stories: Newark’s Burgeoning West African Population and the In-School Experiences of African Immigrant Youth; Michael Simmons and Mahako Etta -- 4. Police-Youth Relations: On the Ground Perspectives from Nigeria´s Federal Capital; Samuel Oluwole Ojewale -- 5. "To become somebody in the future": Exploring the Content of Youth Aspirations in Urban Nigeria; Dabesaki Mac-Ikemenjima -- 6. Someone has to tell these children: You can be as good as anybody!; Cecilia Fiaka -- 7. The Limits of Individual Level Factors for Girls Achievement in Ghana and South Africa; Sally A. Nuamah -- 8. Youth Employment and Labour Market Vulnerability in Ghana: Aggregate Trends and Determinants; Adedeji Adeniran, Adekunle Yusuf, and Joseph Ishaku -- 9. The Role of “eTrash2Cash” in Curbing the Menace of “Almajiri” Vulnerability in Nigeria through Waste Management Social Micro-entrepreneurship; Alh. Muhammad Salisu Abdullahi -- 10. Burden, Drivers, and Impacts of Poor Mental Health in Young People of West and Central Africa: Implications for Research and Programming; Kenneth Juma, Frederick Wekesah, Boniface Ushie, Caroline W. Kabiru, and Chimaraoke Izugbara.

Open Access

This open access edited collection explores obstacles that impede, and potential pathways toward improving, the material and psychological well-being of youth in and from West Africa. Contributors range from researchers to practitioners, offering a transatlantic, transcontinental set of perspectives on the mounting evidence that, whether they reside in poor “underdeveloped” or wealthier (OECD) countries, young people who live in poverty and are African-born or of African descent are disproportionately burdened by the global phenomenon of increasing income inequality. Mora McLean is Co-Adjutant in the Office of the Chancellor and Office of Globally Engaged Experiential Learning at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA.