ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a global news media of young people in and of West Africa and how they are frequently portrayed as victims of endless abuse. Focussing on children in, and of, the specific region of West Africa, while allowing exploration of global/local links especially between the countries of West Africa and the large populations of West African origin and descent in the UK. Media portrayals of children in and of West Africa are found to be dominated by moral panic and discourses recounting the abuse of innocents. Globalisation includes children from poorer parts of the global economic periphery, have become goods traded as commodities. Non-governmental organisations (NGO) and portrayals of abused children are often biased towards the worst cases of maltreatment and even guilty of misrepresentation by implying that such phenomena are generalised. The chapter concludes that child abduction, slavery thrive as a kind of moral commentary on corruption and a signifier of a wider African condition.
