The Slums of Africa: Their Impact on African Youths

By Saah Millimono

Baby-boy, 14, sits smoking marijuana in a corrugated hut in West Point, a seaside slum of Monrovia. Around him are girls and boys of similar ages, some slightly older, also smoking and dancing to the tune of rock music. Some of the girls are pregnant and look rather funny, as if they have each swallowed a football.

There’s a tunnel under a tarmac in Freetown; for years it’s been the home of a number of teenagers.  They are all drug addicts, and make a living from selling opium in pieces of wrapped paper.

In a makeshift brothel of a slum in Conakry, a number of teenage prostitutes wait their turn, carrying handkerchiefs and condoms. Some of the girls are no more than 15, but their eyes tell you that they are older.

And it’s not just in Monrovia, Freetown, and Conakry that the slums have ruined the youths of Africa but in every African country. Although there are slums in other parts of the world, their impact upon the youths in Africa has never been most terrible. Because these are the breeding grounds for child soldiers and would-be killers in the wars of Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc.

Poor, desperate, and needy, they jump at the slightest chance of wars in their countries, hoping to gain some relieve from the pain and misery they have known in the slums, where they had to fight for their very existence, like gladiators in an arena. In turn they become prey upon by junta leaders who use them as shells and bullets.

It’s not only the junta leaders who are taking advantage of these underprivileged teenagers but even most
African governments. They are too concerned with politics, power and official-profiteering than with the plights of these neglected teenagers. Except during elections when they can take advantage of the youths’ ignorance and make false promises to win their votes, they look the other way.

 Now the youths live just short of being sub-humans, with little or no healthcare, education, and allowance. Even access to safe drinking water and toilet is almost a dream. Each day they go round and round in a hopeless circle, becoming pickpockets, teenage prostitutes, drug addicts and armed robbers.

It takes great courage and determination to raise out of these slums, what with all the temptation and hardship they offer, the government’s inability to give the youths a sense of hope, and the level of corruption in the schools. In my country, Liberia, it has become a common practice for youths to spend their nights in nightclubs consuming alcoholic beverages than studying at home, knowing that a few dollars or an affair with some teacher will ensure their high school certificate. But such bad practices take them no farther from the slums, and they are still peddling wares along the streets even with a so-called university degree.

It is a painful but hopeless situation. Surely these people do not wish to live like this and if only they are helped they will do better. Or have they been singled out already for total annihilation, so that everybody else is looking the other way?