Wiebesiek examines the construction of a single story of African girlhood as the girl-in-crisis. Arguing that this story is underpinned by colonialist and neoliberal ideology, Wiebesiek’s analysis points out that the victim status of girls is implicated in the maintenance of unequal global power relations and the politics of knowledge firmly established during colonialism. Importantly, the voices of African girls themselves are absent from the story which means it is not easy to account for the complexities of African girls’ lives. Wiebesiek provides an essential intervention showing that stories about girlhood told by African girls themselves reveal that they are and can be agentic subjects that can and do observe and analyse their own lives and contexts and have a valuable and necessary contribution to make to the project of (re)defining African girlhoods.