Today is the Day of the African Child.
The Day of the African Child, DAC is commemorated every year since 1991 in memory of the 16th June 1976 student uprising in Soweto, South Africa, during which students who marched in protest against the poor quality of education were massacred by the then apartheid regime in place in South Africa. Thirty years after, we continue to witness a steady decline of the education system in the continent, so much so that African countries continue export their best potentials abroad in a vicious cycle of brain drain, while still enriching the West with more wealth in form of education tourism.
Within the Nigerian context, there still exist glaring Inequality, child marriages, rape,child molestation, female genital mutilation, mindless looting of the commonwealth, poor infrastructure, weak education and health care systems, all pointers to a bleak future for the Nigerian Child and indeed the African Child. Despite the very deplorable state of affairs in our continent, the African child remains resolute, creative, resilient, forward thinking and does not wait for the government to act.
On the 16th June 1976, students marched in protest against the poor quality of education they received and demanded to be taught in their languages. They were met with brute force and many were killed in that incident. 45 years after the Soweto Uprising, 30 years after the first commemoration of the DAC, the African Child still suffers from State sponsored oppression as was seen in the EndSARS movement in Nigeria last year, with the invitation of the military to quell protesters.
Nearly five decades after the Soweto Uprising, we still experience very low investments in education, poor curriculum development, old fashioned pedagogy prompting the African Child to learn under very difficult circumstances. Yet, the African Child continues to defy the odds, charting new courses and excelling at his or her chosen enterprise amidst obvious limitations.
It is against this background that the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, ACERWC, a committee of the AU established under Articles 32 and 33 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (the Charter) chose the 2021 theme as “30 years after the adoption of the Charter: accelerate implementation of Agenda 2040 for an Africa fit for children”.
Today's celebration calls for serious introspection and commitment towards addressing the numerous challenges facing the African Child across the continent. The ACERWC calls on Member States to contextualize this celebration as a build-up to the realisation of the rights of children from the family/community level and up to national and international levels.
In 2017, the theme was “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development for Children in Africa: Accelerating protection, empowerment and equal opportunity”. The Child friendly version is “Accelerating protection, empowerment and equal opportunities for children in Africa by 2030″. Again, this theme is in line with the SDGs and the Agenda2063 of the African Union.
We can't continue to wait for our political leaders and policy makers to bamboozle us with their fine grammar and grandiose talks. Forty-five years after, was the blood of the Soweto Protesters shed in vain?
God forbid that those lives died for nothing.
Our leaders must go beyond the rhetorics and implement Agenda 2040 if indeed we want an Africa fit for children by 2063.
Jisi
