Reimagining Reproduction: Making babies, making kin and citizens in Africa

Through the award, we aim to influence future studies of reproduction in Africa. We will build and strengthen a research network on the continent and create an environment that supports a cohort of early and mid-career researchers to drive the research agenda for the years to come. We believe this is important because social realities in Africa are regularly misrepresented; in order to correct this, it needs research from the continent on the continent. The topic of the research network is reproduction in four African countries (Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda). Most research and interventions into reproductive health in Africa frame it in terms of pathology, mortality, and irresponsibility. Instead, we ask what it means for African women, men and couples to have (or not have) children and explore in what ways love, care, beginning something new and securing better futures are expressed in in raising children.