This edited volume offers a rich collection of up-to-date research and critical scholarship from various African institutions on incidents of youth violence, intervention and prevention in sub-Saharan Africa. It integrates thinking, evidence, responses, and debates relating to this topic, laying the basis for fresh insights and innovative strategies. The chapters capture a spectrum of pertinent issues such as economic hardship, lockdowns, sexual and reproductive health, pregnancy, online sexual harassment, xenophobic violence, and micro-aggressions in school contexts, and present guidelines on how countries might learn from successful interventions recently implemented. They explore young people’s access to familial and community resources, state-sponsored initiatives, peer counselling, youth-friendly services, and other relevant structures. Thus, among other things, this volume stimulates further debate on what is driving violence in different African contexts—specifically, how intersectional identities create vulnerabilities to violence—and influences ways of dealing with the issue. This interdisciplinary and cross-cutting volume serves as a vital resource for experts at universities, in international organisations, civil society groups and intergovernmental organisations who wish to both analyse and take action to address and prevent the type of violence that currently afflicts young people sub-Saharan Africa today.

"By focusing on the participation and consequences for ordinary people, this collection offers a fresh perspective on the eruption of violence in sub-Saharan Africa. None of the contributions takes the easy way out--either by claiming any special propensity of Africans to violence, or by calling attention to titillating aspects of the violence itself. Rather, they offer 'thick descriptions' of particular violent episodes to develop their contexts and the larger causes that made them happen. The case studies, drawn from field research in Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, search for the meaning of specific instances of collective violence to the individuals caught up in them."--Nelson Kasfir, Dartmouth College "This coherently assembled set of contributions illuminates crucial aspects of the disorder and insecurity afflicting much of contemporary Africa. The potent social force of a marginalized youth generation is explored in its different manifestations in a variety of settings by an excellent roster of scholars."--Crawford Young, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison "Unmatched in its ethnographic depth and attention to critical dimensions of African conflicts.... This volume cuts across the continent and across several intertwining themes to provide highly contextual analyses within a well-definedframework." --Catherine Besteman, Colby College, editor of Violence: A Reader

Youth violence: Sources and solutions in South Africa thoroughly and carefully reviews the evidence for risk and protective factors that influence the likelihood of young people acting aggressively. Layers of understanding are built by viewing the problem from a multitude of perspectives, including the current situation in which South African youth are growing up, perspectives from developmental psychology, the influences of race, class and gender, and of the media. The book then reviews the evidence for effective interventions in the contexts of young people’s lives – their homes, their schools, their leisure activities, with gangs, in the criminal justice system, in cities and neighbourhoods, and with sexual offenders. In doing so, thoughtful suggestions are made for keeping an evidence-based perspective while (necessarily) adapting interventions for developing world contexts, such as South Africa. Youth violence in South Africa: Sources and solutions is a valuable addition to the library of anyone who has ever wondered about youth violence, or wanted to do something about it.