This document provides an overview of poverty among child-headed households in sub-Saharan Africa. It discusses factors that lead to the establishment of child-headed households, including parental death, lack of extended family support, and parental neglect. It also examines the deprivation these children face regarding income, healthcare, nutrition, education, shelter, and emotional well-being. Good practices from some countries that provide support to child-headed households are mentioned, and recommendations are made to better support these vulnerable children through skills training, access to services, social protection, and prevention of abuse and exploitation.

1. Poverty among child-headed
households in sub-Saharan
Africa: An overview
Shimelis Tsegaye
Head, Child Protection and Development
The African Child Policy Forum
24 October 2017

2. Outline
• Understanding the child-headed
households (CHH) phenomenon
• Factors in the establishment of
CHHs
• State of deprivation of children of
CHHs in the area of:
• income, health, nutrition, education,
shelter, emotional wellbeing
• Good practices
• Recommendations

3. CHH- the phenomenon
o May be a sign of the saturation/breakdown of the extended family’s capacity
to care.
o May be a manifestation of the rapid transformation of the African extended
family safety net/communal care practices
o May be viewed as a new form of coping: although the ‘role-reversal’ and
‘parentified’ role of these children is questionable on developmental grounds
o “Heading a household while still a child closes all the doors for the future” a
15 years old boy in Kigali
o CHHs were first seen as ‘unacceptable’, then as ‘unavoidable’, and then as
possibly ‘viable’
“a phenomenon that proves the extraordinary resilience of children. But it is to
be neither mystified nor idolized. It is at its best the purest and most innocent
expression of love of older siblings by their younger ones and the keeping of a
promise made to a dying mother. But it is also mostly borne out of the
compelling urge for survival, a desperate attempt to cling to life.”
~Assefa Bequele

4. Factors in the establishment of CHHs
• Where there are no relatives to take them in
• When residential care is not available
• To keep their family’s property and land
• Because of a promise by the oldest to a
dying parent
• When older siblings feel capable of
running a household
• Abuse in polygamous marriages
• Prolonged imprisonment of parents
• Migration of parents in search of work
• Parental alcohol abuse and neglect

5. About numbers…
• A 2015 estimate shows that close to 50 million children lost one
or both parents due to one cause or another.
• In that year alone, more than 8 million children lost both parents
due to one cause or another, some of which end up in CHHs
• Communities may be reluctant to acknowledge the existence of
child-headed households
• Many children living/working on the street are in fact CHHs
• Child-headed households are sometimes a temporary arrangement
• May be underrepresented in household surveys because generally
an adult is required to complete the household questionnaire
• Numbers of CHHs with a resident adult are most likely to be
obscured because parents will often conceal children’s role as
carers: Hence, children caring for adults are largely invisible

6. Countries of good population
surveys know very little
o “Citizens with the knowledge of
child- and youth-headed households
in their areas are requested to inform
social workers in the local and
district Social Development offices
as well as local authorities and
community leaders such as chiefs,
traditional leaders and faith-based
leaders,” ~ Minister of Social
Development-South Africa (2014)

7. Income poverty
 Households with terminally ill parents often face a rise in
medical cost and a decline in income by about 60%
 Families that lost the head of household due to AIDS
experience a 30-40 per cent decline in household income over
the subsequent year
 In Ethiopia
 61 percent of male and 31 percent of female heads of households
are engaged in daily labour earning very little incme
 13 percent of male and 9 percent of female heads are engaged in
petty trading.
 22 percent of the girls are engaged in domestic employment,
mainly as maids
 CHHs in rural areas are on average better off in terms of overall
income than their urban counterparts

8. Healthcare-related deprivation
 Suffer from severe malnutrition, diarrhoea, pneumonia, skin
problems and stomach pains, due to unhygienic and
insufficient food, housing and environment
 In Ethiopia, 35% pray for healing when sick, while 27% use
medicinal herbs and plants: Those few who visit public health
facilities are denied of treatment – because of the absence of
an adult In Rwanda, 50% reported to have had very limited
knowledge of RH
 53% of children in Rwanda and 85% in Sierra Leone cited cost as a
barrier to accessing health services
 In Uganda, 74% of households drew water from sources that were
considered protected, 25% of households drew water from
unprotected wells, springs, ponds, rivers, rain water and streams.
 Many of children in CHHs exhibit stunted growth.

9. Nutrition/food deprivation
 In Ethiopia showed that children in child-headed
households mostly suffer from low quantity of food
and often survive on rotten and thrown away food
stuffs. The study also found that, in most cases, they
engage in hazardous labour in exchange for food, or
trade sex for food, in the case of girls
 In Sierra Leone, 71.4% of CHHs and their
siblings/relatives live on one meal a day usually in the
late afternoon or evening. 24.4% live on two meals a
day and 4.2% live on three meals a day.

10.  In Uganda, 48% of all
child-headed households
had only one meal a day,
followed by 45% with two
meals and only 7% having
three meals a day.
 14% of the children in the
study beg neighbours for
food and 9% ask relatives
for food.

11. Educational deprivation
 In Uganda, 41% had only attained some level of primary education without
completing the primary cycle, while 18% reported having progressed to
secondary level
 In Sierra Leone, 65.8% of CHH interviewed are currently enrolled in and
attend school while 34.2% are not in school
 Most of these children repeat grades in Sierra Leone: more female CHHs
(56.5%) have had to repeat a grade than males (45.2%).
 In Rwanda, 41% reported lack of school fees and 33% reported lack of
school uniforms as a major barrier
 Low rates of school attendance, higher rates of dropping out, frequent
absenteeism, lack of money for scholastic materials, limited pedagogic
support at homes : “parental pedagogic void”
 In Sierra Leone 42.3% of CHH claimed to receive help with their
schoolwork from their classmates and friends. 25.4% claimed to have
needed support but do not receive any.

12. Shelter deprivation
• In Ethiopia, many CHHs live in
shacks, under plastic shelters,
in store rooms, on the street
• 53% surveyed in Rwanda live
in shacks
• 21% surveyed in Senegal live
in rooms and houses in the
backyard and 9% live in
dilapidated shacks that are in
bad conditions

13. Emotional deprivation: Ethiopia

14. Abuse and exploitation
 In a study in Swaziland, 71% of
orphaned children were
dispossessed of their household
furniture and items and 14% lost
their livestock
 11% of the children in Uganda
reported incidents of property
grabbing
 Children often mistake abuse for
protection and love
 29 % of children in Zimbabwe
reported abuse and exploitation of
their siblings by others

15. Support provided to CHHs- Senegal

16. Good Practices
 Rob Smetherham Bereavement
Service for Children-South
Africa -play therapy and
bereavement counseling
 Nkundabana-Mentoring support-
Rwanda
 CLPC- Free legal support to
recover dispossessed property
 Isibindi Model of care-South
Africa: providing care, protection
and developmental support to
vulnerable children and families

17. Recommendations
• Provide skills training to enable children manage
their parents’ businesses
• Provide economic, psychosocial, caregiving and
other support
• Provide healthcare and material support to sick
parents and their children
• Ensure free access to essential services
• Prioritize CHHs in school feeding programmes
• Allow CHHs to directly access social protection
schemes
• Provide special protection from abuse and
exploitation
• Raise awareness at all levels to create a supportive
environment for affected children and families

18. 18
Thank you!