• Child Wellbeing

Violations of child rights and the state of children’s wellbeing are serious concerns in Africa, but there is limited documentation and reporting with which to monitor the situation, or the efforts made to improve it. the African child Policy forum (ACPF) has responded by providing proper documentation and reporting of the state of child wellbeing, with the goal of mobilizing public opinion against violations of children’s rights, and influencing laws and policies that have a bearing on children. with this in mind, ACPF has committed to the production of a regular report entitled the African Report on Child Wellbeing (henceforth, ‘the Report’).

The aim of the Report is to monitor the wellbeing of children in Africa and the efforts made by African governments to realise children’s rights and ensure that wellbeing. It also serves as a tool to facilitate compliance with good practices, and constructive engagement.

As part of the Report, ACPF developed a methodology with which to measure governments’ performance in realizing child rights and ensuring their wellbeing.  This measurement approach seeks to assess the extent to which African governments meet their international, regional and constitutional obligations to children, and thus provides an indication of how prioritised children’s issues are in governments’ policy agendas, and the extent to which those agendas are child-friendly.

Performance evaluation involves qualitative and quantitative methods of assessment.  Both methods are utilised as appropriate in the Report. This paper focuses on the quantitative measurement.

Performance scores generated by this exercise serve as indicators of governments’ efforts to realise the rights and wellbeing of their children. These scores are measures of relative performance, and attempt to show the position of African governments relative to one other. Governments with relatively low performance scores should take their ranking as a signal that they must improve the wellbeing of their children and the overall implementation of children’s rights. Governments with relatively high scores should not, however, consider those scores an excuse for complacency. It should be realised that the overall state of children’s wellbeing on the continent is far from satisfactory, and there is always room for improvement.