The voices of the main stakeholders in literacy and schooling -pupils and parentshave seldom been given adequate space in studies of school and classroom discourse in sub-Saharan Africa. The present paper attempts to redress this imbalance by presenting the voices of pupils from a multilingual urban primary school in Ghana and of parents from a rural bilingual school in Zimbabwe. The Ghanaian study highlights challenges associated with using an unfamiliar language, English, as the medium of instruction, selective teacher treatment in the classroom that leaves some children lacking confidence to participate and the strong influence of the home environment and other socio-economic conditions. The Zimbabwean study highlights what happens when parents are allowed a voice in their children's education. It is argued that pupil and parent perspectives can validate the findings of existing research, deepen our understanding of classroom interaction and, in some cases, challenge conventional wisdom.

Sub-Saharan Africa has predominantly rural populations unable to offer children sustainable access to early literacy and childhood care and education. Children's literacy development starts very early in life through participation and experiences in the home and preschool. My research in rural Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania shows that the transition from home to school is compromised by acute barriers such as lack of parental participation, lack of encouragement and support from teachers, and unavailability of learning materials. However, rural homes and communities are well endowed with a stock of practices, knowledge, and skills relevant to the promotion of literacy development. In this chapter, I reflect on how to empower parents to draw on knowledge and resources within the local context to become better involved in their children's education while also empowering teachers to better recognize and take advantage of local knowledge and resources to enrich instruction and enhance meaningful learning.

Growing interest in bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa has highlighted an urgent need for reading material in African languages. In this paper, we focus on authors, one of several groups of stakeholders with responsibility for meeting this demand. We address three main issues: the nature and extent of African language publishing for children; the challenges for authors; and the available support. Our analysis is based on interviews and focus group discussions with publishers, authors, translators, educationalists, and representatives of book promotion organisations from nine African countries and documentary data on children's books in African languages in South Africa. Although there is evidence of a growing interest in producing books in local languages, the number of titles is constrained by funding. The challenges for authors include the need to understand the ingredients for successful children's books and for the sensitivity necessary to negotiate the linguistic challenges associated with a newly emergent genre in African languages. Support, in the form of competitions and workshops, relies on external funding and expertise and offers only temporary solutions. We finish with suggestions for more sustainable ways forward.

Following on the 1990 and 2000 World Conferences on Education for All, African governments increased their focus on access to schooling (but not necessarily on outcomes) by providing more facilities for increased enrolments. The learning outcomes that had been neglected led to a call to focus on more sustainable access-reexamining the quality of some of those facilities against the anticipated quality of educational outcomes. Studies in Southern and Eastern Africa, including the one under discussion here, indicate that the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not rely only on school-based factors but also on the careful analysis of wider socioeconomic and cultural factors. This paper, through the results of the case study component of the Early Literacy Development project in the Lindi Rural District of Southern Tanzania, discusses why literacy development has lagged behind in Sub-Saharan Africa. The focus of the study and of this paper is on the relationship between literacy practices, literacy events and early literacy development at The study was sponsored by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Development (formerly CIDA)-Strengthening Education Systems in East Africa (SES-EA).

The commitment to multilingualism embedded in the 1996 South African Constitution has wide ranging implications for many aspects of education. This paper focuses on the dearth of teaching and learning materials in African languages required to deliver effective bilingual education, and on the potential role of translation in offering solutions for this problem. Drawing on an analysis of currently available African language books for children and interviews with educators, writers, publishers, translators and organisations concerned with book promotion, it explores issues which have emerged as critical for both the quality and availability of translation. Attention is drawn to the ways in which translation can be perceived to either help or hinder the process of introducing children to reading materials in African languages. The challenges of working in the highly specialised field of children's literature with languages that have undergone varying degrees of standardisation are described. Finally, the tendency to translate mainly into the larger, more commercially viable languages is considered, together with suggestions for ways in which publishers might be persuaded to translate across all official languages.