Afua's interest in childhood stems from her MSc in Development Studies at the London School of Economics, where her dissertation explored the involvement of children in civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. This research led her to develop an interest in the very notion of childhood and how it is understood by different societies, and the implications this has for dominant children’s rights and child protection discourses. As a result, she embarked on a Ph.D. programme at the Centre for West African Studies at the University of Birmingham where her research sought to elicit the perceptions of local communities on children’s rights, the constructions of childhood, and the socialization of children and explored the implications for the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in two communities in Accra, Ghana. Shortly after completing her Ph.D. in 2008, Afua assumed the position of Lecturer in the Sociology of Childhood at the University of Sheffield. During her time at Sheffield, her work started to challenge deficit understandings of childhoods in Africa, and she became engaged in debates problematising the Global North-Global South binary as it relates to childhood studies. In January 2020  Afua moved to the University of Bristol to assume the position of Senior Lecturer in Global Childhoods and Welfare in the School for Policy Studies where she has continued to develop her research interests relating to children's rights in Ghana, challenging deficit understandings of childhoods in Africa and problematising the Global North-Global South binary in childhoods and children's rights research. In August 2023, she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor.

Afua holds a BA (Hons) in History and Sociology (University of Manchester), a MSc in Development Studies (the London School of Economics and Political Science), and a Ph.D. in African Studies (the University of Birmingham).