Kinshasa in Transition

Kinasha is the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the second-largest urban area in sub-Saharan Africa. As the city has grown tremendously - from around 300,000 people in the mid-1950s to more than five million today - it has experienced seismic social, economic and demographic changes. In this book, David Shapiro and B. Oleko Tambashe trace the impact of these changes on women's lives. They find that fertility has declined significantly in Kinasha since the 1970s and that women's increasing access to secondary education has played a key role in this decline. Better access to education has also given women greater access to employment opportunities. By examining the impact of such factors as economic well-being and household demographic composition on the schooling of children, Shapiro and Tambashe demonstrate how one generation's fertility affects the next generation's education. This book should be a valuable guide for anyone who wants to understand the complex and ongoing social, demographic, economic and developmental changes in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa.