Many African children desperately want to attend school, but they or their parents cannot afford the school fees. Even in some countries where primary (elementary) education is free, the students cannot even afford the uniforms, books, pencils and erasers.
No Money = No School
Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Ghana are some of the countries that are trying to make education more attainable by abolishing school fees to keep children in school.
Some children have to walk long distances to attend school each day.
"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." (source)
Classrooms in many African schools are not like American classrooms. Below are some pictures of classrooms across Africa.
(The one white kid above is Mrs. Shoop's nephew, Hudson, attending school in Kenya)
School children sit down to a meal in Ghana in this photo from Colleen Foley and Elisia Carlson. (source)
To pay for food, Pascal started scavenging for scrap metal. Lenjo, he said, "was so hungry he couldn't do anything but sit. Unless I collected the scrap metal, we would go to sleep without eating."
Their fortunes changed when a social worker from the Undugu Society of Kenya, an advocacy group for street children, told the brothers about the organization's school where there were no uniforms, shoes were optional and there were no tuition fees. Intrigued, Pascal asked the deciding question: "Will they feed us?" The answer was yes, and now the boys study every day at Undugu's tumbledown school on the edge of a Nairobi slum. The walls are crumbling stone, there's only one light bulb, and three children share a textbook. But it's far better than the street, and lunch is served at noon.
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