Challenges the African child faces in our time

Today marks 26 years of celebrating the International Day of the African Child. This day honours the children who participated in the Soweto Uprising on June 16, 1976, and raises awareness of the continuing need for improvement of the education provided to African children.

Forty-one years down the road, the issues those children fought, bled and died for remain salient. This year’s theme: “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for Children in Africa: Accelerating protection, empowerment and equal opportunity” aptly captures this.

Today, it is important for us to recall what the day is about, and reflect on the challenges and opportunities facing the full realization of the rights of children in Africa. Rights of children are routinely violated in households, in schools and in society in general. Some of the violations are almost institutionalised and accepted in some circles as norms.

They include denial of educational opportunities, subjection to violence, female genital mutilation, early marriages, child labour, exposure to child prostitution and drug pushing and abuse, and in worst cases, conscription into militias and criminal gangs. 

The theme of this year is apt for Kenya. We are two months away from the General Election and in the process of reforming our education system.

These two events are relevant and intertwined in their relation to the three key needs of Kenyan children in the theme: protection; empowerment; and equal opportunity.

Nothing threatens the safety of Kenyan children on a mass scale than a competitive General Election. We have already seen in Baringo and Laikipia Counties children being forced out of schools and homes by ethnic violence with clear political undertones.

It is important that the authorities, political actors and communities engage to ensure that the electioneering process is free of violence for the safety of our children.

Just growing up

But beyond the threat of mass violence, I want to appeal to parents to be parents for the sake of their children.

A lot of children in our society today are simply growing up and not being raised as they deserve. This is because many parents, especially fathers, have either absconded, or are busy chasing things that don’t matter in the long run. In this era, becoming a parent is by and large a choice. Don’t choose to be, if you don’t want to be.

Back in 1976 the children in Soweto demanded an empowering education. They didn’t want to be in school to grow up.

Today most of our children are trapped in a disempowering system of education. From our assessments, 6 per cent of children leaving class 8 cannot even read a Standard Two passage. A month ago, we highlighted this fact when launching County reports across the country and were surprised by some of the responses, including from an education official. Some thought six per cent is too small a number to worry about.

In 2017 we have a million candidates sitting KCPE, which means 60,175 children will leave school without acquiring even the basic literacy. Are they too few? I don’t think so.

Yet the whole system of education is trapped in the pre-colonial era where children of natives were taught just what they needed to know to be good workers in predetermined sectors.

Kenyan children today face unique challenges. They are growing up in overpopulated villages and crowded cities. They live in polluted environments that get worse by the minute. They leave school to face almost certain unemployment and they live in broken societies without social safety nets that their forefathers and mothers relied on in difficult situations.

As we reform our education system, the key actors must understand this: that our children deserve an education that empowers them to undo the environmental, socio-economic and political mess we have bequeathed them. They need an education that enables them to create new jobs that don’t yet exist, because the traditional ones are either obsolete or soon-to-be obsolete.

On this day, it is critically important to reflect on the inequalities in our education system. These underlie skewed access to other opportunities later in life. It is noteworthy that a Standard Three pupil in Nyeri County is five times more likely to do Standard Two work than his/her counterpart in Wajir County.

Yet even within Nyeri County itself inequalities in education opportunities abound. These inequalities are aggravated by equity-blind government policies on school capitation, teacher distribution, infrastructure development funding and generally, in the implementation of the whole concept of free education.

We need to urgently review the relevant policies and practices to redress these imbalances, and avail equal opportunities to all children through education. If we don’t, our year 2030 outlook is bleak - we will jeopardise the future of all children, including those favoured by the unsustainable, self-reinforcing structure of marginalization.

Dr Manyasa is Uwezo Kenya Country Manager [email protected]