Introduction
Over the years, African children have been victims of a plethora of abuses and impeding situations. They are affected by different levels of abuse, among them, economic and sexual exploitation, gender discrimination and access to health, and participation in armed conflict. Other factors are migration, early marriage, inequality between urban and rural dwellers, child-headed households, homelessness, and poverty.
Africa has the highest number of children involved in child labour, with more than 80 million sub-Saharan Africa, shouldering financial obligations for themselves and their families. It becomes clear that the African child is faced with existential crises that differ from those of their counterparts in other parts of the world.
The United Nations postulates that children constitute a significant proportion of populations on the move across international borders globally, with a large number of those children moving from and across Africa, especially in West and Central Africa. (UNICEF 2017) In Africa, 50% of refugees are children, with about 3 million children forced out of their abode by various humanitarian crises. Among migrants, nearly one in three is a child, which is more than twice the global average (Donato, 2017).
The International Day of the African Child (DAC) seeks to create a child-friendly, quality, free, and compulsory education for all children in Africa. The lives that were lost in the 1976 Soweto agitation gave rise to DAC and was to ensure that every African child has access to education, and not just education, but quality education. It also aims to ensure that the right of the child is respected and protected. This paper assesses the level of success that has been achieved by the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child through the annual celebration of DAC, highlights the successes recorded thus far, and suggests solutions that will help better the situation. Considering the efforts by the Organization of African Unity (OAU), this paper attempts an appraisal of the journey so far as regards the status of the welfare of the African child.

Day of the African Child; The background
On June 16, 1976, approximately 10 thousand black schoolchildren protested the poor quality and condition of education in Soweto, South Africa, and demanded to be taught in their languages. Calamity occurred during the march when the security forces opened fire on the protesting students. Several children were shot; more than one thousand were injured; and over a hundred were killed.
The ugly incident necessitated the coming together of African nations through the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to discuss solutions to the challenges facing African Children in honour of the children that participated in the Soweto Uprising on that day in 1976. In 1991, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the then OAU instituted the DAC in memory of the June 16, 1976 student uprising in Soweto, South Africa.
The OAU, which later became the African Union (AU) in 2001 adopted the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child(ACRWC) which resembles the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child(CRC) that sets out rights and defines universal principles and norms for the status of children comprehensively. This step was taken towards the protection of the rights of the African child, and delivering them from an unhealthy atmosphere of violence and abuse. The International Day of the African Child is a programme that is coordinated by the ACRWC.
The most celebrated reason for the DAC is to ensure that African children get access to education. It is not just about going to school but getting an education that is child-friendly, qualitative, and free of violence. It is also to ensure that the African child is no longer abused in any way or by anyone, as has been the practice. Certain standards will be used to determine the level of success the ACRWC has attained in creating a conducive living environment for the African child.
The DAC which is celebrated internationally, across Africa, under the auspices of the ACRWC gives latitude to member nations to take actions that remedy the situations challenging the rights of children. In furtherance of the goals of DAC, governments in Africa have been taking steps and making policies that aim at bettering the living conditions of children and opening them to more opportunities.
Challenges to education in Africa
a. Out-of-school children
More than half of the global population of out-of-school children are in sub-Saharan Africa. There were 60 million children of primary school age out of school in 2014. This number has fallen by 50 million globally since the late 1990s, and the figures for sub-Saharan Africa have fallen by 10 million. In terms of the number of out-of-school children, Africa occupies the topmost position in the world. A recent report by UNESCO indicates that “of all regions, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of education. Over one-fifth of children between the ages of about 6 and 11 are out of school, followed by one-third of youth between the ages of about 12 and 14.”
Education in Africa is beleaguered and suffers the following setbacks. According to Gallagher (2017), these include:
- Topmost percentage of educational exclusion in the world. Over one-fifth of children between the ages of 6 and 11 and one-third between the ages of 12 and 14 are out of school.
- About 60 percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa between the ages of 15 and 17 are not in school.
- Relegation of female education. Girls are much more likely to stay out of school than boys. Nine million girls between the ages of about 6 and 11 in Africa will never go to school at all, compared to six million boys.
- According to UNESCO, the number of primary-aged children not attending school in Africa accounted for more than half of the global total. Lack of qualified teachers. In sub-Saharan Africa, only about one-quarter of pre-primary teachers are trained. Upper secondary school teachers have a slightly better ratio: about 50 percent have training.
- Access to tertiary education is a major problem. Admission into tertiary institutions in sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest in the world.
- Sub-Saharan Africa trails other parts of the world in the aspect of gender equality.
b. Low quality of education
The children that marched during the Soweto uprising who are the reason for the DAC celebration did not just march because they wanted to go to school, but also because they wanted to get access to free and quality education. The fact is that more children are attending schools but are they learning? Sadly, there is much evidence to buttress the finding that a large number of children in Grades 2 and 3 classes in many countries are non-readers, unable to read correctly even a single word in a paragraph despite two or more years in school (Wolfended, 2015). It is undeniable that most children in sub-Saharan Africa who are acclaimed to be in school cannot compete intellectually with their counterparts from other regions of the world. Thus, even though the number of schools is increasing and more children are being enrolled the quality of education remains grossly discouraging.
According to Facing Forward: Schooling for Learning in Africa, learning levels across the African region are precariously low. Among second-grade students assessed on numeracy tests in several Sub-Saharan African countries, three-quarters could not count beyond 80, and 40 percent could not solve a one-digit addition problem. In reading, between 50 and 80 percent of children in second grade could not answer a single question based on a short passage they had read, and a large proportion could not read even a single word (World Bank, 2018). According to the recent State of Global Education update, almost 9 in 10 children in sub-Saharan Africa are unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10 (Kwakwa, 2023).
c. Dearth of infrastructure
In Nigeria, as in many other African countries, education is plagued by inadequate classrooms and libraries, and dilapidated structures.
d. Inadequate budgetary provision
There is low budgetary provision for education in most African countries, including Nigeria. UNESCO states that Africa has the majority of the basic education financing gap when compared to other parts of the world (Ogwo, 2023).
The way forward
More than 50 percent of out-of-school children globally in Africa and annually about 10 million children drop out of school. This requires urgent attention to redress the “learning crisis” in Africa. According to a World Bank study, there is a need to provide universal basic education with a focus on equitable access, quality, and retention; ensuring effective management and support of teachers; increasing financing for quality education; and boosting institutional capacity
a. Provide Universal Basic Education (UBE) with a focus on equitable access, quality, and retention
The UBE is designed to eradicate illiteracy, ignorance, and poverty. The most outstanding problem with education in Africa is the lack of universal basic education, equal access to education regardless of gender and social class, and the quality of education. In most rural areas of African countries, there is not enough access to schools as the few learning facilities are usually overcrowded making the learning environment for students extremely unconducive. Quality education needs to be guaranteed, and the governments of African nations must ensure policies are in place to achieve this.
In Nigeria, the UBE was adopted in 1999 to promote the first nine years of basic education. The UBE provides for six years of Primary Education and three years of Juniour Secondary School Education. It is supposed to be free in state-owned institutions. However, students are made to pay for books, uniforms, and sundry matters.
b. Ensuring effective management and support of teachers
In Kenya, the government has indicated a move to make teaching a graduate profession, and to stop primary teachers who become graduates from moving to the secondary sector. This has huge potential to improve the status of primary teachers and for greater stability in school professional communities with implications for professional development and improved practices. (Republic of Kenya, 2012). These kinds of moves need to be extended to other African countries to make sure some teachers are skilled and passionate about the profession, and to improve the quality of knowledge these teachers pass on to the students, especially at the formative stage of their educational mind.
In Nigeria, teachers in primary and secondary schools must be licensed by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria to join the teaching profession. But there are still thousands of unqualified teachers in the classrooms.
Furthermore, classroom-focused in-service teacher education, facilitated by new technologies and open educational resources, is beginning to support schools and will do more to become learning communities, providing access to other communities of professionals to nurture and sustain improving practice whilst enabling teachers to develop their knowledge in their professional context if further encouraged (Wolfenden, 2015).
c. Increased financing
African governments in 2014 spent an estimated US$204 per student for primary education – less than half of the amount spent in South Asia, the region with the next lowest level of spending. (World Bank, 2014) Although spending on education needs to be followed up with intense monitoring, smarter and more strategic spending on building Physical and pedagogical structures that are tailored towards the existential realities of the African society.
d. Boost Institutional Capacity
There is a need to beef up the capacity of existing institutions/schools to accommodate more persons. An analysis by Brooklyn’s Center for Universal Education (CUE) showed that 61 million African children will reach adolescence lacking even the most basic literacy and numeracy skills. Failure to tackle the learning deficit will deprive a whole generation of opportunities to develop their potential and escape poverty. And it will undermine the prospect of dynamic growth with shared prosperity.
If you want a glimpse into Africa’s education crisis there is no better vantage point than the town of Bodinga, located in the impoverished Savannah region of Sokoto state in northwestern Nigeria. Drop into one of the local primary schools and you will typically find more than many students crammed into a class. Just a few will have textbooks. If the teacher is there, and they are often absent, the children will be on the receiving end of a monotonous recitation geared towards rote learning. (Watkins, 2013).
In many countries, the number of young people who aspire to study at university vastly exceeds the number of places. In Nigeria, for instance, more than one million young people pass the university entrance examination but they are competing for a mere 300,000 places. More infrastructure and improved academic capacity are priorities, increasing the number of doctoral students who can progress to become members of the Academy (Wolfenden, 2015).
By boosting institutional capacity, there is a need to build more classrooms that afford children the bare minimum required comfort and also enough competent teachers to teach them.
In many countries, the number of young people who aspire to study at university vastly exceeds the number of places. In Nigeria, for instance, more than one million young people pass the university entrance examination but they are competing for a mere 300,000 places. More infrastructure and improved academic capacity are priorities, increasing the number of doctoral students who can progress to become members of the Academy (Wolfenden, 2015).
By boosting institutional capacity, there is a need to build more classrooms that afford children the bare minimum required comfort and also enough competent teachers to teach them.
Why Africa must revive primary education in particular and education in general
The ultimate aim of any education system is to equip children with the numeracy, literacy, and wider skills that they need to realize their potential – and that their countries need to generate jobs, innovation, and economic growth. (Watkins, 2013). Furthermore, Africa is the youngest continent, with 200 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24, the Africa-America Institute reports. By 2040, Africa will have the world’s youngest labor force. Young people in Africa need jobs and a positive outlook for their lives ahead. They need to realize their vision and lead Africa forward. A qualitative education is the foundation and the essence of their future.
There is need for a more accelerated progress so that Africa is not left too far behind by 2030 when the world measures how close we are to the global target of free and quality education for all.
Conclusion
It has been over 40 years since the Soweto uprising where thousands of children protested and asked that they be held to better treatment, especially as regards education. Many years have passed since the June 16, 1976 tragedy, and education in Africa is still stalling in growth, lacking in quality, and failing to produce students who can compete with their counterparts from other regions of the world.
Africa is still home to the highest number of out-of-school children in the world and whereas they are in school, a staggering number of them are not getting quality education as a recent study shows.
Even though more schools have been built in some countries, it cannot be said to have scored a pass mark as regards the quality of education it provides its children. What this means is that Africa needs to go beyond building structures and edifices to learn to ultimately build educational systems. That is systems that can boast of quality teachers and conducive learning environments that focus more on the quality of the education acquired by students. Then and only then can we say Africa and the AU are working towards achieving the goals underlying the International Day of the African Child.
References
ACERWC, (2019). Humanitarian action in Africa; Children’s rights first. African Committee of Experts on the Rights & Welfare of the Child
Donato, K.M. (2017), ‘A Global Mapping of Migrant and Displaced Children: Trends and Patterns’, https://www.oecd.org/migration/forum-migration-statistics/1.Katherin-Donato.pdf.
Gallagher, Katherine (2017) 10 important facts about education in Africa. The Burgen project. July 26, 2017.
Kwakwa, V, “What Will it Take for Africa to Lead an Education Turnaround?” World Bank Blogs January 23, 2023
Ogwo, C. “UNESCO allays majority of basic education financing gap in Africa” BUSINESSDAY May 17, 2023
Republic of Kenya (2012) Towards a Globally Competitive Quality Education for Sustainable Development: Task Force Report, Republic of Kenya
Ritchie, H. (2019) How many children are not in school? Our world in data January 23, 2019.
UNESCO, The latest global statistics for educational attendance from UNESCO are for the year 2014.
UNICEF,’ In Search of Opportunities: Voices of children on the move in West and Central Africa’, 2017.
Watkins, Kevin (2013). Too Little Access, Not Enough Learning: Africa’s Twin Deficit in Education. Available online at: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/opinions/too-little-access-not-enough-learning-africas-twin-deficit-in-education/amp/
World Bank (2014) Children in the official primary school age who are not enrolled in either primary or secondary school. Available online at: OurworldinData.org/primary -and-secondary-education
World Bank (2018) Africa Can Tackle Its “Severe Learning Crisis,” Needs to Focus on Access and Quality, Says World Bank. Press release Dar es salaam March 5, 2018
Wolfenden. F. (2015). Why Africa needs new solutions to its education challenges. World Economic Forum.
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