Empowerment of the Fatherless Girl Child: A Way Forward for Human Capital Sustainable Development of Africa

Abstract

All over the globe especially in Africa, there has been a clarion call for sustainable development for year 2030 through the achievement of ‘17' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs. Deprivation of the fatherless girl child's right engineered by culture, tradition and the law are not emphatically addressed and will continue to undermine the realization of the above global goals especially in Africa where double standards for the male and female child have been a major act of violence and brutality against African girl children. This paper highlights through the content analysis method, the plights of the fatherless girl child and the dangerous experiences they encounter as compared to the experiences of 50 girl children interviewed for this research. Examples are taken from an Igbo Home Video in English called Hear My Cry (2005) and Crying Mother (2014, part 1) re- titled Tears of My Daughter (2015 part 2) and others. The theory of sociology of literature based on the African feminist framework and the content analysis method were adopted to link the literary examples to real societal experience. Data collection includes oral interviews of victims, video recording and note taking. This paper suggests that unless the African government develop empowerment policies for street children, and transform the situation of fatherless girl child, the achievement of sustainable development in Africa come 2030 may not be tenable.