Beggar, serf, after two years in Senegal, a Times correspondent tells why much of Africa is an appalling place to be a child.

They stand at my taxi window, scrawny and unwashed, holding up empty tomato tin cans. They scratch their scabby arms. They wipe their running noses. Listlessly, they chant verses from the Koran. More often, they dispense with me formalities and beg.

These are the talibes, or beggar boys, of Senegal, sent onto the streets by Muslim religious leaders, called marabouts, and ordered to collect a daily quota ranging from 250 francs to 650 francs (50 cents to $1.30), along with whatever else is dropped in their tin cans. If they fail, they face a beating.

EXTREME DEPRIVATION

The talibes who greet me every time I return home to Dakar, Senegal's capital, are a troubling reminder that West and Central Africa can be an appalling place to be a child. From Bombay to Mexico City to Bangkok, child beggars are a banal fact of life: UNICEF reports that half the world's children, a billion people, face extreme deprivation. But there are degrees of misery even among the miserable.

Of the 27 countries with the worst child-mortality rates, 26 are in Africa, most in this part of Africa. Children here reflect all that ails their countries, and they pay the dearest price. AIDS has orphaned them, poverty has driven parents to sell them as cheap labor, and warlords turn them into soldiers.

Moses Vanery, who was 20 when I met him in 2003 in Somini Sengupta recently left Senegal after two years as The Times's West Africa bureau chief. She is now the bureau chief in New Delhi India. Monrovia, Liberia, had spent the last 10 years of his life fighting for two factions in two countries.

Richard Maki, whom I hired as a translator in eastern Congo because he spoke four languages by the age of 18, had not taken the bait to fight, but other fighters ruined his chances for a college education: The cattle his father had set aside for his tuition were stolen when rival militias battled for control of his hometown.

I have met fathers who have sent away their boys to work quarries in another country--something they couldn't imagine their own fathers doing. I have met girls who will never go to school because their mothers need them to fetch water and firewood. Girls' education rates in sub-Saharan Africa remain the lowest in the world; only 56 percent of girls were attending school between 1996 and 2003, according to UNICEF.

WHAT WENT WRONG

In the roughly 40 years since these countries have freed themselves from Europe's colonial rule, the plight of children in Africa has only grown worse. In the 20 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the average citizen is poorer today than a decade ago, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. In 11 countries in the same region, more people go hungry today than 10 years ago.

What has gone wrong? Experts and leaders of Africa point to a mixture of unfortunate circumstances, from unscrupulous rulers to unrelenting cycles of conflict and international economic policies, including American and European trade barriers that stunt African producers.

The conflicts, says Kayode Fayemi, director of the Nigeria-based Center for Development and Democracy, have at least had the unintended virtue of forcing many African leaders to pay some attention to their countries' children--and not just out of pity. Poor and restive youth can be a ruler's worst nightmare, as the child soldiers of Sierra Leone and Liberia amply illustrate.

"It's out of fear," Fayemi says of the newfound interest in children shown by some African leaders. "This is something that could consume them if they don't take a decisive step in reversing the clear inequality."

Africa's child-welfare statistics are stunning.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 3.8 million people have died as a result of a war that began six years ago. Nearly half of them were children under 5, most of whom fell victim to malnutrition and other preventable diseases.

In Sierra Leone, where a decade-long war ended in 2002, 3 of 10 children will die before their fifth birthday, according to UNICEF. Unemployment among the young is rampant, and many onetime child soldiers in the war now dig for diamonds in exchange for a daily bowl of rice.

In Nigeria, the world's sixth-largest oil exporter, fewer children--just 13 percent in 2003--were immunized against chronic childhood diseases than in 1990. Nigeria also put polio back on the map, when Islamist politicians in the north accused the West of plotting to sterilize their children with polio vaccinations.

Many in the region listened and kept their children from being vaccinated, with tragic results. Last May, I stumbled upon a tiny boy in a hospital in the city of Kano, unable to move his lower limbs. His mother said her imams (Muslim religious leaders) had persuaded her not to vaccinate her baby. Thanks to Nigerian politics, polio cases have now cropped up in 11 other African countries.

Children are always the most vulnerable. They are the ones who most need what their rulers haven't been able to offer--a functioning government that provides teachers, health clinics, and a clean water supply to keep them from dying of diarrhea.

CHARITY IS NOT ENOUGH

Even well-meaning governments in the region are stymied in their ability to invest in their own people. Take Mall, which is almost entirely dependent on cotton exports. In 2001 alone, American trade barriers and fluctuation in cotton prices cost the country the equivalent of three years of education spending, according to Oxfam, an international humanitarian agency. School enrollment rates in Mall are among the world's lowest.

Charity, in other words, will hardly be sufficient to help the children of sub-Saharan Africa.

In Senegal, the exploitation of children is also being justified by tradition. Poor children have long been sent to Koranic schools, where they worked on their marabouts' farms to earn their keep, or collected charity from the local community to feed themselves and their teachers.

But today, in an economy with few viable options, begging has turned into a booming business, and armies of tomato-can boys have popped up across the city of Dakar.

WRETCHEDNESS AS STRATEGY

"There are many, many more, and they are much more wretched," says Malick Diagne, a Koranic school alumnus and now the deputy director of Tostan, a group working to reform the talibe system. "It is a strategy--to make them as wretched as possible to inspire sympathy. That wretchedness you see, it's a racket."

On a weekday morning in downtown Dakar, a short stroll from my office, half-brothers named Abdoulaye and Moussa Balde were halfway through their 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift. Two days a week, they come to the city, where their quota is 650 francs a day.

They must manage to feed themselves, and when they fall sick, care for themselves. It would be unthinkable, says Abdoulaye, to use the alms to buy food or medicine.

"We'd get a kick in the rear if we did that," he says, eyes wide open.

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand the economic, social, and political forces that make life extraordinarily difficult for children in much of Africa.

BACKGROUND: Tell students that the countries on the Africa map (p. 13) are mostly the result of Europeans having carved out colonies without regard to ethnic, religious, or language groups. One result: tribal, religious, and linguistic rivalries and power struggles within countries and across their borders.

ASK: Is it surprising that in such an atmosphere children--the weakest in society--might end up suffering? Tell students that Africa is not the only place where children have been the victims of a harsh society.

As students study the photos of child miners and beggars, remind them that child labor--even in mines, mills, and factories--was once common in the U.S. In 1900, 1.6 million children as young as 10 worked at such jobs.

CRITICAL THINKING/HARD CHOICES: Note that major constraints on economic development in Africa are European and American trade barriers. Barriers against Mali's cotton exports are cited.

Do students know what trade barriers are and how they can affect poor countries? Tell them that in 2002, government subsidies to U.S. cotton producers allowed American cotton to sell for 61 percent below its production cost, making it much harder for African producers like Mali to compete. (The Bush administration is pushing to cut agricultural subsidies, but this proposal is strongly opposed by American farmers, including the 25,000 cotton producers.)

Which way would students vote if they were in Congress--to cut subsidies to help African farmers--or to keep subsidies to protect U.S. farmers?

DISCUSSION QUESTION

* Should the U.S. enact economic sanctions against countries where children are exploited?

WEB WATCH: www.unicef.org/emerg/index_24920.html is UNICEF's "Humanitarian Action Report 2005" on the plight of children and women in 33 countries, two thirds of them in Africa. Requires Acrobat Reader.

Lowest Life Expectancies
Of the 15 countries with the lowest life
expectancy at birth, 14 are in Africa.

BOTSWANA       34.19 YEARS
ANGOLA         36.79
LESOTHO        36.81
MALAWI         37.48
SWAZILAND      37.54
ZIMBABWE       37.82
ZAMBIA         39.36
MOZAMBIQUE     40.87
CENTRAL
AFRICAN
REPUBLIC       41.36
NIGER          42.18
AFGHANISTAN    42.46
SIERRA LEONE   42.69
DJIBOUTI       43.12
BURUNDI        43.36
SOUTH AFRICA   44.10

Life expectancy in the
United States is 77.43 years.

SOURCE: THE WORLD FACTBOOK 2004, CIA

(QUIZ 1)

AFRICA'S CHILDREN

1. Many young African boys are forced to become beggars

a as part of their culture.

b by criminal gangs.

c by government officials.

d by their religious leaders.

2. Large numbers of girts in Africa are unable to attend school because

a most African religions prohibit educating girls.

b girts are needed to perform domestic chores for their families.

c school budgets are not sufficient to accommodate both girts and boys.

d most African education focuses on vocational training for traditionally male jobs.

3. Which of the following does the article say has been among the bars to economic development in Africa?

a American and European trade policies.

b The absence of natural resources.

c Africa's distance from industrial countries.

d A cultural preference for farming over industry.

4. Some African leaders are beginning to pay attention to the plight of children in their countries because

a organizations Like UNICEF are pressuring them to help their children.

b wealthier countries are threatening to boycott their products unless they care for their children.

c they fear the children may be recruited into rebel armies or oppose the government.

d they realize that their countries will need healthy, trained workers in the future.

5. Polio, vanquished in most of the world, is again crippling children in 12 African countries because

a there is a shortage of polio vaccine.

b countries can't afford vaccines.

c vaccines are less effective in Africa's hot climate.

d parents refused to have their children vaccinated after political and religious leaders said the vaccines would sterilize children.

Answer Key

1. (d) by their religious leaders

2. (b) girls are needed to perform domestic chores for their families.

3. (a) American and European trade policies.

4. (c) they fear the children may be recruited into rebel armies or oppose the government.

5. (d) parents refused to have their children vaccinated after political and religious leaders said the vaccines would sterilize children.