Orphans in sub-Saharan Africa: the crisis, the interventions, and the anthropologist

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Periodical article

Title:	Orphans in sub-Saharan Africa: the crisis, the interventions, and the anthropologist
Author:	Drah, Bright
Year:	2012
Periodical:	Africa Today (ISSN 1527-1978)
Volume:	59
Issue:	2
Pages:	3-21
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:	orphans foster care anthropological research
External link:	http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/africa_today/v059/59.2.drah.pdf
Abstract:	With fourteen million children orphaned because of AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa is facing an unprecedented crisis. Response to this crisis has focused mainly on mobilizing and distributing material resources to households with orphans. Only a few anthropologists have interrogated the frameworks and values on which the projects for orphans are based. In this paper, the author analyses trends in foster-care research in Africa and suggests that current ethnographic data on foster-care practices do not adequately reflect the changing context of fostering in Africa. There are knowledge gaps in four critical areas: collaboration between external partners and the local community; the role of older women as opposed to men in foster care; the context of orphan caregiving; and the measurement of orphan care. It is only when new data are generated that effective and culturally sensitive programmes for orphans and the people who are directly responsible for their well-being can be developed. Bibliogr., sum. [Journal abstract]