Life for African kids

Education

Many children in Africa are desperate to go to school and learn how to read and write.But most can't - normally because they don't have enough money.

You often have to pay school fees, and parents don't have the cash.

Also, many children are needed to help out at home.

Walking to school

Even children who do go to school have to walk for hours to get there.

In Zambia, Grace Simokali, nine, and her younger sister Misozi walk for an hour and a half to get to their school.

They have to leave home early to avoid the heat and arrive three hours before their lessons start.

No money = no school

In Kenya primary education is now free, but parents still have to pay for uniforms, pencils, exercise books and rubbers.

So eight-year-old Eulalia, only gets to go to school if her mum has enough money.

Conflict

Millions of African children grow up surrounded by wars and fighting.

In Angola, there was fighting for 27 years running, but it's hoped that's ending now after a peace agreement was signed in 2002.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, at least 2.5 million people have died in fighting.

Children are affected in many ways.

1) Child soldiers

They are sometimes forced to become child soldiers and fight - even when they don't understand what the war's about.

In Liberia, children as young as seven have been found fighting in combat.

Sometimes children are taken from their families and forced to fight.

Or they may be forced to fight

to protect their families.

2) Destroys families

Children often get separated from their family because of war - or lose their parents altogether.

Many children are sent away from home if the fighting is really bad.

And their fathers and brothers go off to war, and may never return.

In Rwanda, 300,000 children have no mum or dad and have to run their own family, because their parents were killed in a civil war in 1993.

3) Landmines Landmines - left over from old conflicts - also threaten children.

No one knows where they are and children are often killed or lose limbs when they step on them.

Other facts about conflict

More than 11,300 kids, about a third of them girls, have been forced to fight in Uganda

Seven out of every 10 kids in parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo die before their second birthday

More than 70,000 people in Angola have lost arms or legs

Aids Aids is one of the biggest problems facing children in Africa

today.

It's the biggest single killer on the continent.

Around 23 million Africans have Aids

In Ethiopia alone, 250,000 children under five have Aids.

The United Nations thinks Aids will eventually kill about a third of all young people living in Africa today.

In Botswana and South Africa, up to a half of today's 15-year-olds will die of Aids.

But it's not just about children who actually have Aids.

Around 12 million children in Africa are 'Aids orphans' - so called because their parents have died from Aids-related illnesses.

In Swaziland, one in 10 families are headed by children because their parents have died of Aids-related diseases.

Natural disasters

There's not been enough rain in Africa for the past three years.

And this is causing massive shortages of food.

When it does rain, it can cause floods that also destroy crops.

And some countries also suffer tornadoes, hailstorms and even frost.

The devastating effects of these extreme weather conditions are called natural disasters.

Gender divide Boys and girls are often treated very differently in Africa.Girls work, boys

study

In areas where there are water shortages, it's usually the girls who have to trek for miles each day to collect it, while the boys might go to school.

Girls as young as 10 sometimes have to collect the water for their whole family.Because the girls carry such heavy pots of water, which damages their necks and back, this can lead to them having terrible problems later in life.Girls who go out every morning to get water often can't go to school.

Malawi example

20% females cannot read or write

4% girls have a secondary education and

28% girls and 50% boys have under four years of schooling.

Famine

Millions of children are starving in Africa.

Terrible droughts, floods and poverty often cause a crisis in African countries and people don't have enough to eat.

It's estimated that around

30 million Africans are faced

famine in 2003.

Millions of children live on one meal a day, and many of them are forced to eat grass seeds and roots.

The countries hit by the worst famines are Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and Ethiopia.

Water

Many of us take clean water for granted.

We turn on the tap, water comes out and

we know it's safe to drink it.

This is not the case for many African children.

Many African countries are very poor and very dry, so they get massive droughts.

Often children have to walk miles every morning to get water from wells in other villages.

Drinking water isn't always clean, so lots of children have terrible diarrhoea and nasty infections from drinking it.

Ethiopia is worst-hit, where only a quarter of the popular has access to clean, safe water.

Poverty

Some of the poorest countries in the world are in Africa.

This affects children in all sorts of ways. Often they don't have enough:

Money

Food

Shelter

Education