African child day: How African leaders limit children’s opportunities, access to education

A child on the road of Lagos earning a living through washing windscreen of vehicles

Every June 16, the world observes International Day of the African Child. On this day, attention is focused on barriers facing the African child, especially, in his or her accessing quality education and good healthcare. Since 1991, when the day was first celebrated, African leaders have made several commitments through legal and non-legal instruments. This year is no exception. However, 33 years after the day was first celebrated, GBENGA SALAU writes that things have not improved substantially for the African child.

First celebrated on June 16, 1991, the International Day of the African Child, also known as the Day of the African Child (DAC), has been used to raise awareness on the continuing need for improvement of the education provided to African children.

First initiated by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the day also honours those who participated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976. On that day, students marched in protest against the poor quality of education they received and demanded to be taught in their languages. The day serves to commemorate these children and the brave actions they took in defence of their rights. It celebrates the children of Africa and calls for serious introspection and commitment towards addressing the numerous challenges children across the continent face.

This year’s theme, ‘Education for all children in Africa: The time is now’, is in line with that of the African Union that reads “Educate an African fit for the 21st Century: Building resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, lifelong, quality, and relevant learning in Africa,” which was adopted at the 36th Ordinary Session of the AU Assembly of Heads of States and Governments held in February 2023,

The AU focused on Education for 2024, considering the various challenges its member states are facing in providing education, particularly, in the aftermath of COVID-19. Moreover, the focus on education follows the assessment of the implementation of SDG4 and the AU Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA), which revealed that despite the various achievements, African States face an increasing number of out of school rates, lack of quality education, and higher teacher to student ratio.

Almost 30 years after, things have not changed much across the continent from what inspired the late South African leader, nationalist and first President, Nelson Mandela, when he launched Children’s Fund to cater for street children from toddler to age 22 in May 1995.

At the event, he said, “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” And a testimony to this is the account of the dire situation in Nigeria provided last week by former Chief Imam of Apo Legislative Quarters’ mosque in Abuja, Sheikh Muhammad Nuru Khalid, when he spoke on governance and terrorism.

In an interview with a national newspaper, Khalid said: “A child that was brought up on the streets does not know the affection of the family and he cannot have that love for anybody and therefore he can kill anybody. A child that is being prevented from having education with no justification, the envy in his heart will make him dislike any educated person, the system and the country itself.

“Those potential terrorists that we are seeing on the streets, children begging, children sleeping on the streets, children without clothes, without education, they are potential criminals. And criminals will get access to them to recruit them and become bandits.”

It seems, however, African leaders are ready to turn the tide against the negatives that have bedeviled the African child over time, as this year has been declared the year of education.

Professor of Educational Management at the Lagos State University, Olasunkanmi Abari, argued that it is easier said than done, stating that what the leaders talk may be wishful thinking as the political will to undertake the necessary actions may be difficult to accomplish, especially with drawback forces such as finance, corruption and politicking by the people.

Also giving her thought, a child rights activist, Adeola Awogbemi, said whether African leaders will follow through on their commitments to education remains to be seen, but there are reasons for cautious optimism.

She, however, said recent initiatives and increased advocacy for education at both national and continental levels indicate a growing recognition of the importance of education for Africa’s future.

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 emphasises the need for inclusive and quality education as a cornerstone for sustainable development. She noted that translating commitments into action requires sustained political will, accountability, and strategic investments in the education sector.

“The success of these efforts will depend on the ability of African leaders to prioritise education in their policy agendas, allocate sufficient resources, and implement reforms effectively,” Awogbemi, who is also the Executive Director of First Future Leadership, stated.

Surprisingly, this is not the first time leaders on the continent will be committing specially to boosting education within the region. The renewed effort is coming 24 years after the Dakar Declaration. The Dakar declaration was to achieve education for all by 2015.

Yet 24 years after that declaration, some analysts argued that it can best be described as motion without movement, because of the predicaments the African child goes through daily stare one in the face with the statistics bearing grim witness to the troubles of African children across different sectors including education sector.

No wonder, Abari said 24 years after Dakar declaration; African leaders’ commitment to the Education For All Declaration can be rated low, especially when funding and provision of infrastructural facilities are considered. On her part, Awogbemi said African leaders have shown varying levels of commitment to the Dakar Declaration of Education for All in the past 24 years.

“While some countries have made significant strides in improving access to education, many still face challenges in providing quality education. For instance, countries like Kenya and Ghana have made notable progress in primary school enrollment and literacy rates. However, the overall picture remains mixed, with issues such as inadequate funding, lack of infrastructure, and teacher shortages persisting in several nations.

“This underscores that while progress has been made, substantial efforts are still required to fully achieve the Dakar commitments.” As a show of its commitment going forward, and as part of the 2024 Day of the African Child celebration, a general comment on the Right to Education will be adopted drawing from Article 11 of the African Union Charter. Ironically, it is two years to the end of the 10 years of Continental Education Strategy (CESA) for enhancing access to and quality of education signed in 2016 and nine years after the Dakar declaration elapsed.

Worthy of note is that in the last six decades or more, African leaders have been committing to providing education for all children on the continent, along with protecting several rights of children. This has been done through many legal and non-legal instruments about child’s right and access to education. Some of these instruments and treaties include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981).

Others are the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the UNESCO Convention on Discrimination in Education, African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (Charter/ACRWC) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. There is also the Aspiration 6 of Agenda 2040 and Aspiration 1 Goal 2 of Agenda 2063 which set aspirations to provide quality education for all children.

In spite of all these instruments that African leaders signed and commit to, the 2024 literacy rate involving 207 countries showed that the last 10 on the list, apart from Afghanistan, are nations from Africa. Also the last 20 countries on the list, without Afghanistan and Pakistan, are also countries from Africa.

Similarly, the Save the Children relying on data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Database (ACLED) for 2022 and 2023 said that the number of violent incidents affecting education in African countries rose by 20 per cent in 2023 with 411 reports of violent incidents. It observed that most of the incidents in 2023 occurred in Nigeria (89) and Sudan (55).

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiation (UNESCO) also observed that Sub-Saharan Africa is not only the region with the highest out-of-school population, but also the only region where this population is growing, disclosing that since 2009, the out-of-school population has increased by 20 million, reaching 98 million in 2021.

It added that globally, 16 per cent of children and youth (covering primary to upper secondary) are not attending school. At primary level, 1 out of 10 children worldwide is not in school. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for close to 30 per cent of all out-of-school children globally. 1 out of 5 African children are not attending school (19.7 per cent). Only half of children attend upper secondary school.

It further noted that the out-of-school population fell by just nine million, while it increased in sub-Saharan Africa by 12 million. United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) also observed that more than one in four (29 per cent) school-age children were still out of school on the continent, with the out-of-school population in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 12 million over 2015–2021.

On its part, Global Partnership for Education (GPE) noted that Africa has made considerable progress in education over the last 60 years as completion rates between 2000 and 2022 went from 52 to 69 per cent in primary, 35 to 50 per cent in lower secondary and 23 to 33 per cent in upper secondary education, just as the number of tertiary education students rose from fewer than 800,000 in 1970 to well over 17 million today with more girls in schools.

GPE, however, stated that these gains are insufficient to prepare Africans for the 21st century because there is still a long way to go in eliminating illiteracy and providing children the skills they need for today and tomorrow.

GPE further stated that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, 107 million children, adolescents and youth were out of school in Africa, while only one in five children achieve minimum proficiency level in reading at the end of primary education.

This was why the Lagos State Coordinator, Civil Society Action Coalition on Education For All (CSACEFA), Stella Francis, said the declaration this time around must go beyond lip service as there must be a political will to increase the education budget in most of the African countries to a double digit percentage in their national budgets.

“To also walk the talk, a lot of the education policies and laws must be backed up with implementation. Our education facilities must be made safe for teaching and learning, so serious attention must be paid to domesticating and implementing the Safe School Declaration Policy. The governments must ensure increased access to inclusive education for the children from poor and marginalised homes and the girl child. Schools must be provided in hard to reach communities. It is only then, that we can say that our African leaders are walking the talk.”

Meanwhile, Sub-Saharan Africa, according to GPE, is the only region in the world not to have achieved gender parity in enrolment at any level in the education system, with one in three girls being married early.

It noted that African education systems are hampered by various challenges with teacher effectiveness being the most important predictor of student learning, yet in sub-Saharan Africa there is an average of one trained primary teacher per 58 students, and 16.5 million additional teachers are needed to achieve quality education for all at the primary and secondary levels.

“Violence in and around schools also affects girls’ and boys’ educational outcomes, causing an estimated US$11 trillion in lost lifetime earnings. It is estimated that the cost of incomplete education due to child marriage across 12 African countries that make up half the continent’s population was $63 billion in lost capital wealth.

“Globally, nearly 25 percent of jobs will be disrupted by technology in the next five years, and by 2030 about 230 million jobs in Africa will demand digital skills. Today’s education systems are also poorly suited to prepare young people for a vastly different and uncertain future disrupted by conflict, climate change, technology, globalization and a fast-changing job landscape. Traditional classroom practices need to shift to nurture a broader range of competencies such as creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving and digital skills,” GPE said.

On if African children are being provided the kind of education that will help them to compete globally, Awogbemi said that currently, African children often do not receive the quality of education necessary to compete globally.

She noted that despite improvements in enrollment rates, the quality of education remains a significant concern with factors such as outdated curricula, insufficient training for teachers, lack of learning materials, and poor school infrastructure hinder the educational experience.

“For the African child to compete globally, there needs to be a concerted effort to enhance the quality of education through curriculum reforms, teacher training, and investment in educational technologies,” Awogbemi observed.

Francis said the African child is competing favourably with her counterparts globally, “however, much of this is due to the resilience of the African Child. A lot of challenges are still bedeviling the African Child such as unconducive learning environment, lack or inadequate infrastructure, poor funding for the education sector, poor teacher/pupil ratio, absence of technology to meet up with global practice.”

Although education is critical, the building block to learning and child’s development is the total health system. Yet, many children live in communities with poor health system with many of the children malnourished. A 2021 UNICEF report disclosed that nearly one in three children in sub-Saharan Africa is stunted owing to malnutrition.

At least 216 million African children is said to suffer from stunting and malnutrition with malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa the second leading cause of death among children after malaria.

Also, according to World Vision, addressing child hunger in Africa is critical, considering approximately 30 per cent of children on the continent suffer from stunted growth as a result of malnutrition.

Speaking on whether African leaders are doing enough for the African child to be mentally prepared for educational training considering the high rate of malnutrition among children and poor health systems within the continent, Abari observed that majority of the leaders seem not to be doing enough for the African child in terms of health and nutrition to be mentally prepared for educational training.

Awogbemi stated that poor health system and high rates of malnutrition significantly impact children’s cognitive development and their ability to learn.
She observed that while some African leaders have made efforts to address these issues through various health and nutrition programmes, such as the Home Grown School Feeding programme, these efforts often fall short due to inadequate funding, poor implementation, and lack of infrastructure.

“For African children to be mentally prepared for educational training; there must be a holistic approach that includes improving healthcare systems, ensuring food security, and providing comprehensive support services that address the physical and mental well-being of children.”

Francis said that it is unfortunate that most African states have been inconsistent in following up with their policies and interventions with regards to School Feeding for Children. For instance, the Home Grown School Feeding Programme of the Nigerian government is being hampered by poor and inadequate funding. It’s note worthy that a hungry child cannot benefit optimally from a learning process. Our African leaders will have to do a lot more to ensure that our Children are mentally prepared for learning by taking their nutrition more seriously.”

But some experts argued whatever commitment African leaders make to financing education for all might just be paying lip service considering the dire strait financial crisis many countries on the continent are grappling with. This is because many African countries are facing existential crises, where human capital and socioeconomic development targets for quality health and education are at risk given the harsh realities of debt overhang and sovereign debt sustainability.

As a result of this, they are cash-strapped and struggling with financing basic healthcare, essential education, and other quality of life-enhancing services to their populations.

Of note is that Ethiopia’s, Ghana’s, and Zambia’s sovereign debt defaults is said to underscore the risks that rising interest rates pose for ambitious development plans with 20 African countries are either bankrupt or teetering on the brink of high external debt distress.

Awogbemi stated that given the severe financial constraints and rising debt levels in many African countries, fulfilling the commitment to quality education for all children is challenging but not impossible.

“By balancing debt management with strategic investments in education—through policy reforms, enhanced domestic resource mobilisation, prudent use of international aid, and regional cooperation—African leaders can make progress. Prioritising education funding and ensuring efficient allocation of resources to improve infrastructure, teacher training, and access to educational materials is key. With sustained political will, innovative solutions, and a commitment to the welfare of future generations, African leaders can fulfill their educational commitments despite financial hurdles.”