Many Burkinabe children who fled school following threats by Islamic militants have joined the workforce in the country’s informal accident-prone gold mines.
Bouda, a dusty, noisy gold mine in northern Burkina Faso, provides a meagre living for miners, some of whom are children and teenagers, who work in risky conditions and live in makeshift shelters.
One such teenager is Aziz Zabré, who left school two years ago to become a miner.
Dust-bathed in shafts as deep as 10 meters, which he climbs down without ropes, he chips away with a pickax and complains about not being able to make money by going to school. This, which he says, led him to work in the mines. When he strikes gold, he makes about $90 a month, to partly-sustain his parents and to fend for himself.
An estimated 20,000 children (especially teenagers) work in Burkina Faso’s gold mines. And while admitting to the situation not being ideal, the owner of this mine at Buoda says these children would take up crime but for the availability of the opportunity to work in the mines.
Another such teenager, Rouky Ganamé, 13, fled her hometown in northern Burkina Faso when Islamist militants arrived. She is now a miner.
Rouky was at school when armed men came with their faces covered. She left class quickly and escaped with her family. Currently, she is based in Bouda, where she works at the mine.
But the mines are not safe from terrorists, either, as militants attack often them, demanding a cut of the revenue to fund their fight against the Burkinabe government.
At this point, in spite of her willingness to, Rouky Ganamé sees little hope of returning to school soon. She can’t afford to ride the bus to school, and the school is too far for her to walk to on foot.
Rather comfortingly, however, the Bouda mine owner agrees that it is good for these children to be at school, and says he has some who attend school himself.
Furthermore, the UN has been taking steps to help children and teenagers forced to leave school by the conflict. U.N. representatives say that they are taking a holistic approach to return the country’s children to school.
These children’s plight has also recently attracted a pledge of $59 million from an international NGO, Education Cannot Wait, whose Director, Yasmine Sherif, on a recent visit to Burkina Faso, said:
“I look forward to working with all of you to tell the world about the situation, the challenges, the suffering, and steer the moral conscience of the rest of the world.”
This funding will: facilitate the rehabilitation and rebuilding of schools, the payment of scholarship fees, the enhancement of schooling for girls and will help to bring children and teenagers like Aziz and Rouky out of the mines and back to school.
