Child beggars and vendors on city streets in sub-Saharan Africa visible, bold, and neglected?

Abstract

School-aged children selling on the street in sub-Saharan African cities is a popular pastime that supplants school. Parents and public officials believe that it is prudent to deny truancy is an existential problem. Parents feel absolved from the moral responsibility of ensuring their children attend school and governments feel disobliged to address truancy as a policy issue. Paradoxically, the cost of parents and governments doing nothing to address truancy could be much higher than the cost of addressing it. Children who quit school are exposed to multiple dangers, including crime, drugs, unintended pregnancy and illiteracy. Governments’ anti-poverty programmes and appeals to children to stay in school have not worked. This paper gives an intimate account of the life that child street sellers live. More importantly, the paper offers an antidote to truancy that policy experts seldom recommend – law enforcement. This paper proposes a broad-based strategy that addresses truancy by involving parents, community leaders, local chiefs and law enforcement officials, and uses random raids to disrupt street selling by children.