A short powerpoint of facts and figures about the lives of children in Africa.

1. Life for African kids

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 
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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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