This book is about how work enters and affects the lives of children in Africa, taking for granted neither the traditional values surrounding children's work, nor the international standards against it. Many African societies nurture their children on the ingrained notion that children must work as part of their process of growing up. Children participate in their families and communities through the work they do in the house and in whatever else their families do. Such views are, however, antithetical to the dominant views in Europe and North America which see childhood as a time of freedom from responsibility and economic activity. These views have become so popular with the elites in other countries to the extent that they now drive international campaigns against 'child labour', and have been incorporated into what are now considered universal international standards and conventions.

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