Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the International African Institute, hosted at SOAS University of London, the owners of the book series of the same name.
Evidence widely suggests that children benefit from organised pre-school activities, which can enhance performance throughout their education. However, with African countries already struggling to fund basic education for their burgeoning numbers of young people, what are the chances of adding pre-schooling to the list? And what form should such programmes take to align with local realities?
Our work aims to answer these questions by investigating care for children aged 3-5 in Sierra Leone. Where are these children, who cares from them, and how are they prepared - if at all - for formal schooling in rapidly urbanising societies?
Fostering as an African tradition
Fostering, where children are cared for by individuals other than their birth parents - often members of their extended family - has long been recognised as an important aspect of many African child-rearing systems. This practice has sparked extensive debate over its benefits, drawbacks and underlying motivations. In some cases, children are fostered into urban households in the hope of receiving a better education. Some go the other way - sent back (or retained) in rural areas with relatives while parents seek work, often settling in overcrowded, low-cost housing environments in the cities that are less suited for raising children.
Some child-support agencies have begun (controversially) to trace links between fostering and child exploitation and child trafficking. Some social scientists have riposted that this oversimplifies and stigmatises a core African institution - the extended family, reflected in the adage 'it takes a village to raise a child'. Many African children are fostered to a close relative and face no greater risk of exploitation than children living with their birth parents. Among the Mende people of Sierra Leone, fostering is even seen as beneficial, as it is believed to build resilience and prepare children to navigate life's challenges. However, instances of abuse and neglect can and do occur, even among children fostered to close relatives.
Understanding the lives of pre-school children
Our research, conducted under the Thrive project, documents the typical lives of pre-school children (3-5 years), including those who are fostered. Although our research is still in its early stages, its relevance extends far beyond Sierra Leone, touching on broader debates about early childhood care across Africa. By engaging widely, even at this initial stage, we hope to spark conversations that can inform policies and practices continent-wide.
We aim to answer fundamental questions: Where are these children? Who cares for them, and how? What does a typical day look like for children aged 3-5 in both urban and rural low-income communities in Sierra Leone? How effectively do current caregivers - whether parents, relatives, or foster carers - provide the stimulation and support needed to prepare children for primary school?
By examining these questions, we seek to understand whether existing caregiving practices can be enhanced. Could existing carers be organised and supported to share and implement the best local childcare practices? Such an approach could strengthen early childhood development without placing the significant financial burden of universal formal pre-schooling on already overstretched education budgets.
Challenges in researching the lives of young children
Studying young children, especially those aged 3-5, presents unique challenges. The first challenge we have faced is fieldwork method. Children this young cannot be readily interviewed, so our team relies on observation of the child in natural settings. For ethical reasons, but also because we need to understand context, we only do this observation with the knowledge of carers. We then always interview the carers to ask about the context of caring - who the child is, and how the carer views the child's observed activities.
This has required considerable investment of time and effort in training our team for non-participant field observation. Sierra Leonean social science researchers are predominantly trained in survey and discursive (interview) methods, while ethnographic observation is not yet widely taught in the country's academic institutions.
Despite these initial challenges, our field team has adapted impressively. Through training they are now capable of sustained and nuanced observational work, shorn of the frequent assumptions and moral judgements made by uninstructed beginners in ethnographic fieldwork. The field pictures they have collected, capturing the typical daily activities of children aged 3-5, have been both delightful and eye-opening. These observations not only highlight moments of joy and creativity in young children's lives but also expose some of the harsher realities faced by African children living in precarious conditions. Together, these findings offer valuable insights into the complex world of early childhood in Sierra Leone.
Initial findings: Insights into early childhood care
To illustrate emerging findings, we first draw from a baseline study, which provides numerical information on childcare arrangements. This is followed by insights from our first round of observational findings, leading to a provisional conclusion: more organised forms of early childcare could draw upon some of the best local practices. The aim is to develop community-based childcare models, especially for areas where it will be too expensive to introduce formal pre-schooling.
The baseline data set on childcare, including information on fostering, emerged as a by-product of emergency research undertaken during the Ebola outbreak of 2014-15. While the data are now 10 years old and limited to a transect of villages from central to eastern Sierra Leone, they remain one of the few detailed, field-based resources available on rural and urban fostering dynamics.
During the Ebola crisis, unregulated population movement was a risk factor in the spread of the virus. Understanding where people, including young children, might be moving to and from, was essential for responders. Foster children, for example, might be moved from town to country or vice versa as parents sought safer environments for their offspring.
To gather information on this, we interviewed the heads of households and senior wives of 750 randomly sampled in 28 villages spread across Sierra Leone, spanning from the centre of the country to the border with Liberia. We gathered detailed data on all members of the household, their ages, where they were from and their reasons for being in the household. We also enquired about absent members - notably, makeloisia, children sent out 'for training', a common form of fostering among Mende-speaking communities.
Our findings challenge the assumption that fostering is primarily driven by labour exploitation. Contrary to expectations, most child movements were local - village to village or to regional towns - rather than toward the capital city, Freetown, where labour demand is highest.
Additionally, fostering rates were consistent across age groups, including among children aged 3-5, rather than increasing with age as would be expected if labour were the primary motive. This pattern suggests much movement was mainly a response to family misfortune or the perceived interests of the child (e.g. moving a child to a sister after the early death of the mother).
As part of research training, as well as to provide us with sensitive information we might otherwise struggle to get, we asked our current research team to document their own childhood experiences. This exercise revealed some examples of the darker side of child fostering. One case, complicated by unscheduled relocation during the civil war, (1991- 2002) can be mentioned by way of illustration. It revealed two sisters sent by their single mother to a half-sister in Freetown. Promised education, they instead became unpaid servants as the fostering family faced financial strain due to volatile wartime circumstances.
While such examples highlight exploitation, fostering is rarely reducible to labour alone. Family dynamics and misfortune play a significant role. In cases such as the sudden death or incapacity of a parent the child would often be in a worse position without the intervention of the foster carer. Like regular parenting, fostering can have good as well as bad outcomes - both are social practices.
Our observational research has begun to reveal the range of experiences of pre-school children in both urban and rural settings. We have uncovered examples of lax supervision and elderly carers out of their depth with active and inquisitive young children. Yet many carers - whether birth parents or not - were attentive to the children and expressed happiness in their company. We documented examples of carers facilitating play through crafting toys, storytelling, and engaging in song and dance.
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Play often served as a foundation for skill development. One particularly amusing example involved a 4-year-old playing with his 7-year-old brother, driving an old tyre around a field, pretending it to be a car. They were supposed to take equal turns, but the older brother, now attending school, manipulated the game by deliberately undercounting his own turns and over-counting those of his younger brother.
The 4-year-old knew he was being cheated but could not quite 'lay his complaint' to an adult who was attempting to mediate their squabble. Although he understood the unfairness and the need to argue that 'his brother was not counting right', as a pre-schooler his limited grasp of numbers left him flustered and unable to articulate his case. His attempts to express the injustice, punctuated by halting maths and spluttered protests, greatly amused the kindly uncle trying to mediate. Here was a young man with a strong motivation to begin to learn to count properly. Surely, pushed by his brother's antics, he was already halfway there!
These are among the many instances revealing that despite the challenges of precarious living conditions, African childhood frequently provides a stimulating environment for early learning. Doubtless, with ingenuity and support, these environments could be enhanced further. Training and additional resources for caregivers could make a significant difference, but even with existing resources and capacities, much can be achieved. Expensive, formal pre-schooling is not the only path to enhancing early development.
Dr Hodges is the Principle Investigator for Thrive 'Perceptions and practices at the community level - opportunities and barriers for strengthening informal ECD provision in Sierra Leone.' She has over 30 years' experience in Sierra Leone and over 40 peer-reviewed publications on health, nutrition and child development. Paul Richards is an anthropologist with experience of living and working in West Africa over several decades. He is a professor at Njala University in Sierra Leone. He is author of Ebola: How a People's Science Helped End an Epidemic (2016).
