Children, (im)mobility and transport in sub-Saharan Africa:
implications for meeting the MDGs
Gina Porter,
Durham University, UK
(r.e.porter@durham.ac.uk)
Summary of key
points
- Improving
mobility and access to health and education facilities for both girl and
boy children is crucial to many of the Millennium Goals, notably achieving
universal primary education (MDG 2), promoting gender equality and women’s
empowerment through the elimination of gender disparity in all levels of
education (MDG 3), and reducing the under-five mortality rate (MDG 4).
- BUT Children
and youths under the age of 18 have received remarkably little specific attention
in transport policy in Africa until
recently, apart from limited work on road safety. This is an extremely important omission,
given that over half the population of many African countries consists of
children and young people. The AU-AfDB-ECA-WB-EU document represents an important first step
forward by clarifying the crucial role of transport in achieving the MDGs, and pointing to important research gaps such as
the lack of information on urban travel needs.
- The absence
of a child focus in transport policy is hardly surprising given that we
know relatively little about the mobility constraints faced by girl
and boy children in accessing health, educational and other facilities in
sub-Saharan Africa, and how these constraints impact on children's current
and future livelihood opportunities.
Such knowledge is essential if we are to develop transport policy guidelines
on how to help tackle them. The AU-AfDB-ECA-WB-EU document draws
attention to some of the (rather limited) specific evidence about the
impact of road access and transport availability on children; for instance
paved road impact on girls’ attendance at school (data from Morocco, p.
19) and the important interconnections between transport and other
obstacles to schooling .
- Access (i.e. ability and
ease of reaching destinations, as in the transport usage of the term; Bryceson et al. 2003) may depend not only directly on
transport (vehicles and roads) availability and cost allowing children to
travel but may also be strongly affected by demands for children’s work,
not least their transport role as porters (i.e. the common requirement to
help carry goods for family members etc. because of inadequate or costly
transport facilities). The
contribution of transport failures to children’s time poverty is a crucial
but commonly overlooked issue. In the AU-AfDB-ECA-WB-EU
document, lack of girls’ time for school (Indicators, p. 5) might
be usefully linked specifically to transport failures in the home
environment. Reference is made to
ERA research on women’s domestic transport effort p. 22, but very
often it would seem that children’s domestic transport work is subsumed
under women’s work rather than receiving specific acknowledgment: this is
an area where carefully disaggregated studies of women’s and children’s
effort in different cultural and environmental contexts would be useful.
- We can hypothesise that
there are likely to be important differences in children’s spatial
mobility related to age, gender, family socio-economic status and parental
status (including orphans, HIV/AIDS, single parents, foster children),
urban or rural location, socio-cultural and economic context and physical
environment. Perceptual and cultural factors (e.g attitudes to girls’ mobility in Moslem societies),
in particular, may play a significant role.
- Recent work in Ghana and
ongoing collaborative research (funded by ESRC/DFID) in contrasting areas
of three very different countries (Ghana, Malawi, South Africa) aims at
providing qualitative and quantitative evidence of the types of problems
different African children face in these diverse contexts. The principal focus in our current child-centred
research programme is on a two-strand approach: a) adult researchers
working with children directly to explore and understand their experiences
and b) children being trained to undertake their own research with other
children (on the basis that the uneven power relations between children
and adults sometimes make it difficult for children to talk with adults about
experiences they consider embarrassing or insignificant to adults). The ultimate aim of this research is to provide
detailed information and develop guidelines for policy makers to help them
tackle current problems.
- The key research question in
our ongoing child-centred transport and mobility study is: to what extent
do current constraints on African children’s spatial mobility and
accessibility to services impede their livelihood potential and life
chances and how can policy makers best address these problems? This involves examination of a series of broad hypotheses
(developed from earlier research in southern Ghana):
- Lack of reliable
low cost transport may severely affect access to regular education, with
subsequent impacts on livelihood opportunities and life chances.
- Lack of reliable low cost
transport may impact severely on children's access to health services
(including vaccination and other preventive health services) and to
adequate safe water supplies. This contributes to high child mortality
and morbidity rates.
- Children's widespread (but
often hidden) role as transporters (pedestrian headloaders,
cart operators etc.) may further substantially constrain their access to
education, health and associated livelihood options since this brings
time poverty i.e. reduces the time available to attend school or health
centres etc. This is likely to apply particularly to girls, especially
fostered girls.
- Bicycles may have an
important potential role in improving access to school and other
services, but cultural and other factors are likely to impede their
adoption, particularly among girls.
Policies to promote wider availability of cycles (for learning to
ride) and cycle repair courses for girls and boys in school might impact
positively on school attendance but this needs further exploration.
- Mobility constraints may
impede children's subsequent livelihood opportunities through impacts on
both education and health and thus reduce overall long-term potential for
poverty eradication (MDG 1). The
constraints are likely to be even greater for girls than for boys.
- Mobility constraints on
children are likely to be higher in rural than urban and peri-urban areas, but even in an urban context there
may be substantial constraints imposed by transport factors or fear of
mobility due to violence, witchcraft, trafficking etc., particularly for
girls.
- Mobility needs and
constraints are likely to vary not only according to age and sex of the
child and socio-economic status of the child’s family but also according
to the broader local context (agro-ecological zone and associated
economic production patterns, culture, density of school and clinic provision,
availability of peripatetic services, access to radio, TV and other information
services).
- Our ongoing study of
children, transport and mobility, involves research over 3 years in 3
countries and 6 different agro-ecological zones: adult researcher studies
will be completed in urban (high-density), peri-urban,
rural and remote rural (no services) contexts. The pilot phase in each country has now
been completed and our methodology finalised. We are using a very diverse range of
methods to achieve triangulation:
- Our adult researcher
studies range from life histories with young people in their twenties (looking
back to the impact of mobility and access to services in earlier years on
their current situation and perceptions of life chances), to mobile
ethnographies with children on their walk from school to home, from focus
groups with out-of-school children to questionnaire surveys.
- Our child researchers have
selected their own methods, including travel diaries, in-depth interviews
and photographic travel journals.
Through this combined effort we hope to achieve a clearer,
more nuanced, understanding of the diversity of constraints and challenges
children face in accessing health, educational and other facilities they feel
are important to their lives, and thus to build clear guidelines to aid policy
makers in achieving the MDGs which focus on children.
Annexe
1: A brief review of the current state of knowledge on children and mobility in
sub-Saharan Africa
Socio-spatial studies of child mobility are very rare (see
below), but there is a large published literature (in Sociology, Geography,
Anthropology, Education, Health Science, Child Psychology etc.) on related
issues such as child labour (usually without
specific reference to headloading/porterage),
education and child health. Similarly, there is a growing literature dealing
broadly with transport, mobility and accessibility and related gender issues in
low income countries. This provides important contextual material.
With
around half the population consisting of children under 18 years in most
African countries, attention to children in a transport and livelihoods context
is long overdue. It is especially
required through bereavement and illness from HIV/AIDS in southern Africa. Children of
6 years and above often make a substantial contribution to household production
and survival strategies. Increased
poverty and dependence on children, associated with Structural Adjustment
Programmes and the spread of AIDS, has led to a spate of studies on child
poverty, street children and children's work (Preble
1990, Bonnet 1993, Bradshaw et al. 1994, Velis 1995,
Robson 1996, Porter and Phillips-Howard 1996, Kariuki
1999, Punch 2000, Canagarajah and Coulombe
2001, Ersado 2005, id21 insights 56: June 2005) and
broader studies of children's rights and violence (e.g. Petty and Brown 1998, DevTech systems/CERT 2006 on violence in Malawi schools, Jewkes et al. 2006 on rape among rural South African youth,
Christiansen et al. eds. 2006).
A few studies have touched on the mobility of children in
urban settings including early research by Schildkraut
(1981) in Moslem Kano, Nigeria,
where the mobility of children - particularly young girls - is essential for
the maintenance of wife seclusion. In
the very different context of urban Uganda (Kampala), Young and Barrett (2001), consider
the spaces of homeless and marginalised street children, and van Blerk (2005) draws attention to the important links between
identity and mobility of street children.
Perhaps the most substantial urban study of transport in Africa incorporating children is that conducted in Accra in the early1990s (Grieco et al.1996, Turner and Kwakye
1996, Turner et al. 1996). This shows
how the falling off in transport provision associated with structural
adjustment measures (increased cost of vehicles and spare parts etc. due to
devaluation raising the cost of imports etc.) has increased dependence on the
work of women and children. Children are
increasingly central to the economic organisation of households. Timing of school shifts is thus crucial since
this affects their ability to perform work.
School-age girls play a significant income role by providing labour in
petty trading outlets which compensates for absence of adult household members
delayed in distant markets by transport problems. This can impact severely on
girls' access to education (Grieco et al. 1996:3,
12). Grieco
et al.'s findings may well apply in other urban contexts.
Work
on children's mobility and transport in rural areas is
surprisingly sparse. Malmberg-Calvo’s (1994) examination of the role of women in
rural transport (based on travel and transport surveys in four countries) is
noteworthy in this respect since it incorporates some basic data on children’s
contribution to transport. Katz's
research in rural Sudan
(1993) shows how young children deliver messages and carry food around the
village, and subsequently travel more frequently, depending on their
birth-order position. She finds a great
deal of spatial autonomy, with few sex or status related differences evident
until late in childhood. Only when girls
reach puberty do their spatial horizons contract. No other study is so clearly
focussed on children's mobility in rural Africa.
There is need for much more focussed rural analysis specifically dealing with
children's mobility needs: this is a major gap.
In
rural and urban areas, water and sanitation provision and garbage collection
are likely to be factors which are particularly significant for children. They are especially vulnerable to health
hazards and carrying water and garbage is often a child's job with potentially
negative impacts on health (heavy weights, noxious materials) and (through loss
of time) on education (Nicol 1998, Bartlett
2001). Accessibility problems of remote
settlements and limited mobility of mothers and health staff contribute to low
immunisation rates (Bosu et al. 1997; Porter 1997,
2002). These raise the likelihood of a
wide range of diseases associated with poor sanitation and water supplies (UNDP
Human Development Report 2002).
Throughout
Africa, with few exceptions, more than half
the children in any given age-group fail to attend school regularly
(Bonnet 1993). This is related to the
opportunity costs of children's time spent at school and the high outlays which
have to be made in school fees and/or associated costs (e.g. transport. Girls' enrolment rates are generally much
lower than boys'. Even when children
attend school, they commonly perform household duties both before and after
classes. Apprenticeships also may
operate alongside, or take the place of Western schooling (Robson 1996). The boundaries between 'school' and 'work'
are often blurred (Roberts 1998): travel to school in Ghana, for
instance, often incorporates porterage duties (Porter
and Blaufuss 2002).
There are few studies directly concerned with school transport in Africa: the inclusion of children in South Africa’s
National Household Travel Survey 2003 and associated analysis of trips to
educational centres is an important step forward. Gould (1973) noted that poor transport
services forced most Ugandan children to walk to primary school while the low
density of secondary schools usually required children to live away from home:
this situation still pertains widely across Africa (for a recent review of
conditions in Eastern Cape, South Africa see Potgeiter
et al. 2006). Vasconcellos (1997) emphasises the way
low density of rural schools and limited availability and high cost of public
transport forces most rural children to abandon formal schooling after
relatively few years in Brazil
and also raises road safety problems of poorly maintained public transport
driven by poorly trained drivers over poorly maintained roads. This work
resonates with conditions in Africa but needs
verification.
Coverage
of children's road safety issues is surprisingly limited. Epidemiological trends in developing
countries show that mortality rates of childhood infectious diseases are
declining while rates of injury-related death and disability are increasing
(Mock et al. 1999). Road accidents are
the single greatest cause of injury and death among 15-19 year old men. In Africa
there was a three-fold increase in the number of road deaths between 1968 and
1983 (Ansell 2005:123). A study of
child accident victims in Nigeria
(Adesunkanmi et al 2000) shows that the majority are
pedestrians and mostly over 5 years: they were often injured while trading at
the roadside. Mock et al. (1999)
emphasise that in Ghana
children have a particularly high exposure to accidents in both rural and urban
areas. Much road safety work lacks a
gender perspective.
The potential for Intermediate Means of Transport to
improve children's access to services needs investigation. A few studies indicate the potential
significance of bicycles. Grieco et al. (1996) illustrate the impact of diverse
ethnic backgrounds on cycle usage. Unlike children from northern Ghana living in
Accra, children
from southern ethnic groups are not encouraged to cycle by their families. Among boys it is perceived as dangerous while
girls daring to ride are considered of 'questionable sexuality' (Grieco, Turner and Kwakye, n.d.). There is
particular need to further explore the range of attitudes to cycling for girls.
Although recent gender studies suggest some variation among different cultural
groups, there appears to be a widespread tendency for women to have less access
to cycles and other intermediate transport types than men (Fernando and Porter
2002). We need to know to what extent
this impacts on school attendance and access to other facilities. We also need to assess the potential for
improving girls' access to cycles and cycle repair courses (Porter and Blaufuss 2002). A
review of the shova kalula
programme in South Africa
by Mahapa (2003) is particularly instructive from
this perspective.