Can the Little Ones Now Smile?

This is November 16, just another day in Africa. But it is in one such day in 1976 that thousand of children in the black neighborhood of Soweto in South Africa were bludgeoned to death by ruthless apartheid regime when protesting for their rights.

More than three decades to day, it behooves us to ask the obvious of questions, are our children today better than before? Can we stand shoulder tall and claim that justice has truly been done for these young angels?

Writing this is at the backdrop of disturbing media information of archaic behavior of child molestation, hunger and rape all meted against the innocent child. A common foreign media stereotype on the African child which however is frighteningly true in some part of the continent is that of a hapless, tottering kid in ragged clothes, romping up and down the streets begging for food and alms.

But this is not necessarily true for the whole part of the continent. There surely is some light at the end of the tunnels even for the pitch dark parts of the black African continent. The global organ that roots for the rights of the child –UNICEF comfortably declared that child mortality rate has dropped by fifty percent from the year 1960 down the lane to date. That simply means that the number of years a child needed to leave has now doubled in the last five decades. This is not entirely bad news.

More children can now go to school today more than before. Many African countries like Kenya, South Africa and Egypt have elaborately rolled out programmes to facilitate free basic education for their children.

 In ASAL regions of Kenya with tough weather conditions and scarce food water, the government in partnership with sympathetic NGO’S has well executed dietary programmes to help cushion the disadvantaged kids against these harsh conditions. This is an important leap towards the achievement of the millennium development goal -2015 that targets to reduce child mortality.

Africa after all not that bleak. With all the imminent challenges that dogs her we sincerely need to grant her all the due she deserves.

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