by FRANCESCA MEZZENZANA & GABRIEL SCHEIDECKER
Early childhood development interventions in the Global South is a huge industry built on highly questionable assumptions
The Black child has no toys. He does not ?nd around him any occasion to arouse his intellect … the early childhood of the Black always takes place in an environment intellectually inferior to any imaginable in Europe … The Black child remains inactive for long hours. He thus undergoes a terrifying head shrinking from which it is virtually impossible to recover. The neural centres of his cortex, which should normally be used for exercise, do not receive the necessary stimuli for their development.
When the Belgian professor of psychology Robert Maistriaux wrote the above in 1955 to describe African children, he was not doing anything unusual. His words confirmed what European colonisers then wished to hear: that colonised people were somewhat cognitively deficient and needed to be rescued from themselves. The fact that ‘science’ supported this view gave only more legitimacy to the colonial project. In the 1950s, such scientific claims – linking brain deficits to inadequate childcare – seemed uncontentious.
In July 2024, the cover of The Economist portrayed a golden globe in the shape of a brain against a pink background. ‘How To Raise The World’s IQ’ boasted the title, introducing the issue of how to improve children’s brain development globally through improved nutrition and mental stimulation. It features research on malnutrition, responsive care and brain development. A careful reader won’t take long to realise that the ‘world’ mentioned in the title does not, however, represent an abstract, universal category of humanity. Here, ‘how to make the world brainier’ means how to make a certain part of the world brainier. That part of the world is the Global South.
You know that the developing brain is a truly popular topic when even The Economist, hardly a child-focused magazine, dedicates a cover to it. From colonisers in the past to the economists of today, this obsession with children’s brains – and especially with the brains of Brown, poor children – seems to continue. If anything, it has only increased – no doubt thanks to the increasing popularity of neuroscience and brain-scanning technology. This is evident in the field of early childhood development (ECD) interventions – a multibillion-dollar industry– where brain-focused programmes have gained prominence.Nolonger merely about ensuring physical health, many early childhood interventions have the explicit goal of improving brain development. As UNICEF puts it: ‘too many children are still missing out on the “eat, play, and love” their brains need to develop …’ Together with the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO), corporate foundations and NGOs, UNICEF has also placed children’s optimal brain development at the core of its agenda.
In 2018, these UN organisations launched the Nurturing Care Framework that seeks, in part, to implement interventions to improve children’s brain development in the Global South. These consist of advising and training parents in childcare practices thought to be conducive to optimal emotional and cognitive development or, in other words, to a thriving brain. These interventions are based on two simple premises. First is the idea that parental behaviour in the first years of life can alter the basic architecture of a child’s brain. As UNICEF’s Early Moments campaign claims: ‘In this formative stage of life, a baby’s brain can form more than 1 million new brain connections every single second – a pace never repeated again.’ The second is the belief that a very particular type of childcare – described as ‘nurturing’ – is conducive to sturdy brain circuits. A series of counselling cards from the WHO and UNICEF illustrates what this entails: talking and singing (even before birth), parent-child play, frequent eye contact, etc. No one would be surprised by such advice. It is the same that parents across the world can find on the internet, in popular science magazines, in the mainstream media, and even on the blog of a multinational food company like Nestlé.
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