Many have heard that African children are growing up in unfavorable conditions. High mortality due to starvation. And this is in the 21st century, full of worldly blessings, when, going to the corner of the house, a person can buy almost everything they need in a store. About the current situation on the continent and how children live and grow there, we will learn further from the article.
Colossal decline
The human rights organization Save the Children has prepared a report according to which the mainland of Africa is indeed considered the most unfavorable place for raising new generations. Life is hard in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mali, as well as other countries.
One in eight children born there die before their first birthday. 1/10 women die during childbirth. The level of education is also very low. Only 10% of females are literate and literate.
Clean water is available only to a quarter of citizens. So anyone who periodically complains about life can simply imagine the conditions of existence of these people. Little children in Africa are dying before they are 6-10 years old because they simply do not have food and clean water.
Indifference and orphanhood
Many people just live on the streets, because their parents met death from malaria, AIDS or another disease, and there is simply no one to look after the kids. There are many beggars here. This sometimes annoys and scares tourists, but it is worth remembering that African children pester people not to annoy, but only out of a desire to survive. Even a piece of bread would help them.
They are deprived of the happy joys of childhood that our firstborns will know, who are taken to zoos, Christmas trees, dolphinariums and toy stores. The tribes are trying to support the younger generation, since it is they who will have to take care of the elderly in the future, but it is not always possible to keep large offspring.
Long here is the period of breastfeeding. The children of Africa do not even know what a stroller, a playground, a school are. The world order of the environment remains for them a dark gap in knowledge. All around them is poverty and meager living conditions.
Bad handling
Babies here are carried on the back or on the hip, tied like a sack, and not on the hands. You can often see how a woman goes to the market or to another place, drags a bag on her head, rides a bicycle, while carrying her child. The fleeting impulses of the heirs are not taken into account.
For example, in our latitudes, if your son or daughter sees something interesting on the street, you will surely stop and let them see what is there. The mainland of Africa lives according to somewhat different laws. If the baby wants to go somewhere,no one will specially carry him there, he will have to crawl on his own. Due to which, for sure, it will be physically more developed than kids who move only within the apartment.
It is also rare to see capricious crying here. Simply because it doesn't help get the attention of the parents.
Wild customs
The life of a child is valued extremely low. Old people are much more protected, because writing is poorly developed here, knowledge is transmitted only by means of language. So every centenarian is worth its weight in gold.
There are horror stories of how the children of Africa were sacrificed in order to appease the gods and prolong the life of the elderly. The child is usually stolen from the village next door. Twins are especially popular for this purpose. Until the age of five, fragile creatures are treated with disdain here and are not considered human. Do not use death and birth certificate.
In Uganda, sacrifices have become common practice and have not surprised anyone for a long time. People have come to terms with the fact that a child can be beaten or even killed when going outside.
Scale
The starving children of Africa are the victims of a humanitarian disaster. It affects 11.5 million people, according to data collected by international organizations. This is most pronounced in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. In total, 2 million children are starving. Of these, 500 thousand are close to death. ¼ of the population is undernourished.
More than 40% of children under the age of 5experience exhaustion due to poor nutrition. The children of Africa do not have the opportunity to get an education. In schools, they give only the basics, which in our countries are already known in the initial groups of kindergartens. A rarity is the ability to read and write. This is enough for a person to be called enlightened. They learn to count on pebbles, and sit right on the street under the baobabs.
Relatively high-income families send their children to white-only schools. Even if the state supports the institution, in order to attend it, you still need to pay at least 2 thousand dollars per year. But this gives at least some guarantee that, after studying there, a person will be able to get into the university.
If we talk about villages, the situation there is absolutely deplorable. Instead of experiencing the world, girls get pregnant and boys become alcoholics. The starving children of Africa, against the backdrop of such deplorable conditions, are doomed to death from birth. Very little is known about contraceptives, so families have 5-12 children. Due to this, although the mortality rate is high, the population is growing.
The low value of human life
Demographic processes here are chaotic. After all, it's not normal when at 10 years old children are already having sex. A survey was conducted, during which it turned out that if they contract AIDS, 17% of children will intentionally infect others.
In our reality, it is hard to even imagine the wildness in which children grow up, almost losing their human appearance.
If the child lives to be 6years, he can already be called lucky. Because most mow down dysentery and malaria, lack of food. If his parents are also alive up to this point, these are repeated miracles.
Men on average die at 40, and women at 42. There are practically no gray-haired old men here. Of Uganda's 20 million citizens, 1.5 million are orphans due to malaria and AIDS.
Residence conditions
Children live in brick huts with corrugated roofs. When it rains, water gets inside. The place is extremely small. Instead of a kitchen, there are stoves in the yard, charcoal is expensive, so many people use branches.
Washing rooms are used by several families at once. There are slums all around. With the money that both parents can earn, it is simply unrealistic to rent a house. Girls are not sent to schools here because they are not considered to need an education, because all they are good for is taking care of the house, having children, cooking, or working as a maid, waitress, or any other service labor position. If there is an opportunity in the family, then the boy will be given education.
The situation is better in South Africa, where there is a rapid development. Help for the children of Africa here is expressed in investments in educational processes. 90% of children receive knowledge in schools without fail. These are both boys and girls. 88% of citizens are literate. However, there is still a lot to be done to change something for the better in the villages.
What is worth working on?
Progress in educationsystem began to be implemented in 2000 after the forum in Dakar. Much attention should be paid to education, and indeed to saving the lives of preschool children.
They should eat right, get medicine, be under social protection. At the moment, little attention is paid to babies. The households are impoverished, and the parents themselves do not know very much. Although the trends are positive, the current level is still not enough. There are frequent cases when, getting into school, children quickly leave it.
Blood story
An international holiday is Africa Children's Day, which is celebrated on June 16th. Established in 1991 by the Organization of African Unity.
It was introduced so that politicians around the world would pay attention to this problem. They chose this day because in 1976, on June 16, in South Africa, 10 thousand black girls and boys formed a column and marched through the streets, protesting against the current situation in the field of education. They demanded the provision of knowledge in the national language. The authorities reacted to this attack without understanding and shot the demonstrators. The unrest did not subside for another two weeks. People did not want to put up with such injustice.
As a result of further disturbances, about a hundred people died, and a thousand were injured and maimed. This marked the beginning of the uprising, which involved many sections of the population who participated in the strikes. The apartheid system collapsed as early as 1994, when Nelson Mandela came to power.
