This article focuses on agency, as a natural disposition in children to be active and participative. Africa's parenting attitudes and education in African family traditions encourage and foster children's responsible agency in family life, cultural and economic activities, and their own developmental learning from an early, especially within the peer culture. It is amazing that in an era of accentuating efforts to understand and actualize the UNCRC provisions on children's citizenship and participation, international advocacy persists in stigmatizing as child labor the centuries-old productive agency of Africa's children and youth, which disables almost 70 percent of the continent's population, instead of working to enhance and learn from it. The article critiques the conceptual developmental and core rights issues pertaining to children's agency, substantiating the discourse with illustrative impressions on the changing but ‘normative’ child agency in family traditions in Cameroon.
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