20 November 2018

Culture and Education

Some 3.5 million children living in the Lake Chad Basin in Africa’s Sahel region do not have access to education according to the UN-backed Education Cannot Wait fund.

The children who are refugees from other countries, internally displaced by conflict and drought and those simply living in some of the poorest parts of the country have not been able to go to school.

The Lake Chad Basin, which includes Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria is one of the most deprived and dangerous regions of the world. Climate change and environmental degradation have exacerbated the challenges the region faces, while Boko Haram extremists have terrorized people across the four countries causing much of the displacement.

However, hundreds of thousands of children have been able to study thanks to Education Cannot Wait, a recently created global fund for education in crisis situations.

Photo:16-year-old Aisha Mahamadou writes on the blackboard in a school in Dar es Salam refugee camp in the Lake Chad region.