Street Children: Fix What Pushed Them Out

A t 10 a.m. on 30 September, 2026 Avenue Kennedy in Yaounde looked like it always does. Beneath a billboard that reads “All of Africa in one country”, three boys sat on a piece of cardboard. Claude is 15, Albert, 13 and Nasser, 12. They were sharing a bottle of “glue”. A waiter chased them from a terrace. They stood up, without hurry, moved ten metres, and sat down again. Perhaps that short distance captures the whole problem. Street children-commonly called “Nanga- boko” in Yaounde-have occupied this same pavement for years. It is the same pavement where Cameroon Tribune photographed street children in 2018, 2020 and again in 2022. The faces change. Sometimes they are younger. The phenomenon remains. The Nanga- boko are still there. On the same 30 September, the Ministry of Social Affairs launched another special campaign to remove 300 such children from the streets within six months. It is part of Project "559", a programme that has existed for over ten years. Through the project, street children in the Centre Region will be identified, sensi­ tized, registered and reintegrated into society. The in­ tention matters. Removing children from danger matters. No child should sleep on cardboard on Avenue Kennedy. But the real question begins afterwards: what happens once they leave the street? Success cannot simply mean fewer children on Avenue Ken­ nedy. It must mean children still living safely with families, attending school, learning a trade or receiving appropriate care six months or a year later. Previous initiatives show that considerable efforts have already been made. This is not a story of inaction. Children have been identified, removed from the streets, reunited with families or placed in specialised centres. In 2015, the ministry reported 120 street children identified, 72 returned to families. Between April and June 2020, during a pilot project dubbed “Monitoring and Observation of Street Children”, 162 children were removed from the streets of Yaounde alone. 40 sent to the Betamba Institute, 78 returned to families, 27 placed in MINAS centres. In 2022, UNDP also pledged FCFA 200 million to support 500 vulnerable children in Yaounde, Douala and Ngaoundere. These operations are not trivial. They mobilize social workers, transport, temporary shelter, family tracing. They show a State that is trying. Yet one crucial question remains difficult to answer publicly: how many stayed off the streets? Without long-term fol­ low-up, counting removals tells only half the story. We count how many we removed. We rarely publish how many returned. And in the absence of that second figure, we are condemned to repeat the first. The Mi­ nister of Social Affairs, Pauline Irène Nguéné has made an important distinction: these children are not “of the street”; they are in the street. If a child is “of the street,” then the street is the problem and clearing it is the solution. If a child is “in the street,” then the street is only where his/her problem has become visible. The origin lies elsewhere. The street is rarely where their story begins. For most, it begins in a house that became unbearable long before Avenue Kennedy became an address. Family conflict, the death of a parent, a second marriage that turns a child into an intruder, extreme poverty where there is not enough food for everyone, violence that becomes routine, rejection, school dropout after re­ peated failure and shame, the inability to pay for a birth certificate, an exercise book, a pair of shoes. For some, the street first becomes an escape, then a refuge. That is why “fixing the home” cannot simply mean sending a child back through the same door he left. What must be repaired is often much wider. It could be family relationships, schooling, protection, healthcare and economic security. Some families need mediation and parenting support. Others need concrete help keeping children in school. Young people facing subs...