Une enquête ethnographique menée de 2017 à 2025 montre que des enfants réunis sur un même trottoir n’y sont pas arrivés de la même manière : six parcours, dix pistes pour accompagner la Stratégie nationale de lutte contre la mendicité.

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Enfants talibés à la recherche de nourriture aux abords de la circulation de Bamako, 2020. Photo : Drahmane Fondo.

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Published: August 25, 2026 4.26pm SAST

• In Mali, it is relatively common for children who grew up in villages to be sent to big cities, entrusted to the care of adults more or less closely related to their parents.
• These children are not always well treated and, when they work, their earnings are often partially or entirely confiscated by their host families.
• Although this reality is known to all stakeholders — families, NGOs and public authorities alike — the collective response falls short. Yet avenues for improvement do exist.

In the village of Woromana (Ségou region, central Mali), the story of young Mariam is known to everyone. Sent to Bamako to live with a close relative, she fell seriously ill, to the point of "losing her mind," in the villagers' own words.

Her parents, once informed of the poor living conditions in her host family, spoke about it (and the information spread throughout the village, then beyond) as far as the surrounding villages. This scene, gathered during fieldwork conducted in Ségou as part of my doctoral research, illustrates a mechanism largely overlooked by current child protection systems in West Africa.

An Informal but Very Real Alert System

My ethnographic research – whose full results are presented in my doctoral thesis – conducted between 2017 and 2025 in Bamako and several villages in the Ségou region reveals the existence of a spontaneous community alert mechanism.

While most children placed within the urban circuit retain contact with their family of origin, certain categories remain structurally more exposed to a total breakdown of this link: "talibé" children entrusted to a Quranic teacher, girls employed as domestic help, sometimes through intermediaries with no family ties, and children who have fled and ended up on the streets following fostering marked by abuse.

When a child placed with an urban host family suffers mistreatment, the information travels back to the village through other children, guardians or relatives, spreading quickly by word of mouth to the edges of the village and sometimes to neighboring villages. This collective narrative then becomes, for parents often powerless in the face of their child's situation, a form of liberated speech.

This community mechanism is complemented, in urban settings, by a second informal device: the spread of mobile phones, which has made it possible for contact between a fostered child and their parents of origin to now rarely be broken. Regular calls allow for a form of remote monitoring that did not exist a generation ago. These two mechanisms — the snowballing village narrative and the phone contact — sometimes combine directly, whether through an alert given by a neighboring village, or an unanswered call that fails to reassure, triggering intervention by a family of origin.

The return of children to the village, when it happens, is not a simple happy ending either. Families frequently observe a change in behavior in the returning child, whose urban way of life sometimes clashes with village realities. Some boys adopt habits that are new to their community of origin, sometimes even forms of delinquency rarely seen before their departure. This is a sign that this second point of rupture, largely under-documented, deserves attention comparable to that given to the child's initial departure.

A Fragile Link: When Intermediaries Become a Risk

This community alert system, valuable as it may be, must not be idealized, however. My fieldwork reveals that it often remains ineffective, particularly when children pass through intermediaries with no real family ties to them — for example, women originally from the village, now living in Bamako, who temporarily house girls before their placement as domestic help in an urban family. Several documented cases show that these intermediaries take a portion of the child's wages or receive a commission on the placement.

Intermediaries, however, are not the only ones involved in this appropriation. My research also documents cases where the employing families themselves divert, partially or entirely, the wages owed to the child at the time of payment, often after several months of accumulation. This diversion is sometimes accompanied by fabricated accusations of theft, allowing the employing family to dismiss the child without ever paying the amount owed. This pattern recurs all the more easily because these children, once dispossessed in this way, have no identifiable recourse to assert their rights. This absence of any complaint mechanism directly calls into question the effectiveness of legal protection for child workers.

Today, in Bamako and other major cities, we are witnessing the emergence of genuine informal placement networks, where women offer domestic help services while capturing a portion of the placed children's earnings, without any written contract or oversight from the competent public authorities.

The absence of any mechanism enabling these children to assert their rights in cases of abuse constitutes a major gap, distinct from the two informal protection mechanisms described above. Neither the village network nor phone-based monitoring can act effectively when the exploitation originates from the trusted intermediary itself.

Treating the Symptoms, Rarely the Causes

These informal protection mechanisms and their limits remain largely absent from current institutional frameworks. Despite a comprehensive legal framework (ratified international conventions, national legislation, interventions by numerous non-governmental organizations), the number of street children continues to grow significantly in Mali. Official statistical data on the subject remains scarce, and the few available studies come almost exclusively from activity reports produced by the organizations themselves.

My research shows that most non-governmental organizations intervene to assist children already in precarious street situations, without being able to act on the root cause of their suffering. A root cause that my research attributes, to a significant extent, to new fostering practices that have drifted away from their traditional protective function. In other words, current systems address almost exclusively the final symptom, while mothers in Woromana and elsewhere already identify, in their daily lives, the real origin of the problem.

Malian law, however, addresses several aspects of this issue. The education framework law No. 99-046 of 28 December 1999, amended by law No. 2022-010 of 3 June 2022, makes schooling compulsory and free for every child from the age of 6, for a 9-year cycle leading to the Basic Education Diploma.

The Malian Penal Code, which came into force on 13 December 2024 (law No. 2024-027), also criminalizes the incitement of a minor to beg (article 242-91), a provision documented in research conducted in Bamako and Ségou. In practice, the enforcement of these laws remains uneven, and a large number of children placed in early apprenticeship effectively fall outside the scope of compulsory schooling, without this gap between law and practice being subject to systematic monitoring.

This issue also arises at the institutional level. Quranic schools, not recognized within Mali's formal education system, fall outside the scope of intervention defined for non-governmental organizations. A discussion with the UNICEF office in Bamako confirmed that any structured intervention for children entrusted to these schools remains contingent on clarifying this status, which is currently unresolved. This situation leaves thousands of children beyond the reach of any support, even as the village alert mechanism described above could, if recognized and supported, help precisely document the scale of these situations.

What Donors Can Change

Three concrete directions emerge from these findings for donors and organizations engaged on these issues.

First, invest more in preliminary ethnographic research, allowing the root causes of problems to be identified before addressing symptoms alone. This step is currently given very little value within the conventional funding cycle. Second, require the genuine involvement of all relevant actors at every level of decision-making, including families themselves and traditional authorities, whose nuanced understanding of community dynamics remains largely underused. Finally, prioritize direct observation of on-the-ground realities as the primary evaluation mechanism, rather than reports produced at a distance from the situations they claim to document.

One final observation deserves to be stated plainly: the existence of legal texts is not enough on its own. Without sustained support for their effective enforcement, bringing together the State, civil society and field research, the provisions already enshrined in Malian law and international conventions will remain, for many children affected by this mobility, a protection that exists more on paper than in their daily lives.

The post Protéger les enfants en mobilité au Mali : l’angle mort des dispositifs actuels appeared first on Réseau Enfance Afrique.

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The expression "street children" conceals a reality more complex than it appears. At the root of this phenomenon lies a system of solidarity that has been transformed by urbanization, poverty and the commodification of social relationships.

In many West African countries, such as Mali, some children spend the day there before returning home. Others have been entrusted to relatives in the city and gradually find themselves exposed to exploitation, family breakdown, or begging.

As an anthropologist, I conducted field research in the streets of Bamako between 2017 and 2025. I combined semi-structured interviews – by day and by night, on patrol – with the children I met, along with extended participant observation. It is this combination, particularly the nighttime work, that allowed me to understand this complex reality.

In reality, several categories of children intersect within the same space, without the boundary between them always being visible at first glance.

Categories of Children in the Street

As early as 1985, the Grand-Bassam Forum, organized in Côte d'Ivoire by the International Catholic Child Bureau (BICE) and UNICEF, had already attempted to clarify matters by distinguishing between children "in the street" (who spend the day there before returning to a home in the evening) and children "of the street", in total breakdown from any family, who live and sleep there.

This distinction remains accurate, but it is difficult to observe during the day. Girls, for example, also occupy public space (selling drinks, fruit, or street food) before disappearing at nightfall. Boys, meanwhile, split between those who go home and those who stay.

To understand this phenomenon, one must trace it back to its source: the traditional practice known as fostering, widespread in many West African societies. Within this practice, a child belongs not only to their biological parents, but to an entire extended kinship network. This network can legitimately decide to entrust the child to another family member, often in the city, to provide them with a better education, a craft apprenticeship, or simply a future the village can no longer guarantee.

A Quasi-Market Logic Takes Hold

This practice, once founded on a principle of reciprocity and solidarity within families, is today profoundly challenged by urbanization and the monetization of social relationships. And this may well be the most significant finding of my fieldwork.

Contrary to the idea of a gradual deterioration triggered by a later shock (a death, a remarriage, an economic hardship), the rupture is often present within the fostering arrangement itself, from the moment the child arrives with their hosts.

This observation echoes the work of anthropologist Mélanie Jacquemin, who showed, in Côte d'Ivoire, that village families themselves are now hesitant to entrust their daughters, lacking any assurance of reciprocity in return.

For their part, many urban families today prefer to hire paid domestic help rather than take in a niece or young cousin from the village. The employment relationship is seen as simpler, without the emotional and social obligations that a kinship tie entails. Traditional fostering thus finds itself competing with a quasi-market logic from the very outset of the placement — not merely in its later abuses.

Risk of Rupture

This shift is not unique to Mali. In Senegal, begging by talibé children entrusted to Quranic teachers has intensified since the massive exodus of many Quranic teachers to cities in the 1970s, following a severe drought. Kadessa Arissabe Sané, who devoted her doctoral thesis to this phenomenon in 2017, shows that this begging has evolved into a genuine social order, paradoxically sustained by a population that continues to view it as a religiously valued act of almsgiving.

In Benin and Togo, a comparable phenomenon exists under the name vidomégon (literally "placed child"), with the same drift toward domestic exploitation when the practice escapes any protective framework.

Children who genuinely end up on the streets, in total rupture, remain exposed to considerable dangers: traffic accidents, untreated illnesses, sometimes death, without it always being possible to identify their relatives.

Yet it would be wrong to believe that most children traditionally circulating between families are in this extreme situation. Most retain a home to return to, even when their days are spent in the street. This reality has not escaped lawmakers.

In most of these West African countries, laws do indeed exist to penalize abuses arising from traditional fostering solidarity. In Mali, for example, begging and its incitement are prohibited by law.

Ineffective Sanctions

But the gap between the law and its enforcement remains considerable. Without effective sanctions, these provisions struggle to produce the intended effects. The phenomenon of children and families begging in the streets has thus become commonplace, as widespread a social phenomenon as the legislation meant to regulate it.

Nothing lasting can be built, however, without the resolute involvement of the authorities and the State, at every level of the administrative hierarchy. This mobilization must be combined with the sustained action of civil society — non-governmental organizations and local associations.

It must also draw on the contribution of academic networks producing, from their own fieldwork, scientific knowledge that is directly applicable to child protection, community mediation and nutritional security. The Réseau EnfanceAfrique is one such example.

It is precisely this nuance that paves the way for responses more finely adapted to on-the-ground realities, capable of targeting the actual turning points rather than treating this population uniformly.

One must understand a society before seeking to transform it. This is an obvious truth too often forgotten by child protection policies. Yet it remains the only path toward solutions that last.

What Can Be Done?

Two concrete levers emerge from this finding. On one hand, support must be tailored to the nature of the placement and the degree of rupture already established. The majority of children, whose family ties remain active, require preventive support aimed at preserving these ties, rather than a response limited to crisis management.

Placements through intermediaries with no family ties, on the other hand, already amount, in practice, to a form of informal labor requiring a dedicated legal framework.

On the other hand, narrowing the gap between the law and its application requires coordination that is still largely absent today between the State, civil society and field research networks. This combination is the only one capable of documenting, with the precision this subject demands, the situations that genuinely tip into danger.

The post Enfants de la rue en Afrique de l’Ouest : ce que révèlent huit années de terrain appeared first on Réseau Enfance Afrique.

West African societies are undergoing a profound and rapid transformation. Fast-paced urbanization, the monetization of social relationships, and growing economic individualism: within just a few decades, these changes are upending customary balances that had structured community life for generations.

Traditional child fostering — this ancestral practice of children circulating among kinship members, for purposes of education and family solidarity — illustrates this transformation with particular clarity. Yet it is only one of many manifestations of a broader phenomenon: that of customary mechanisms of social regulation being tested by a world changing faster than they can adapt.

Two findings from my fieldwork particularly struck me.

First, a reality more nuanced than I had initially formulated. Girls also occupy public space during the day — selling drinks, fruit, or street food — but they disappear at nightfall, leaving the street to boys alone. And among these boys, not all share the same fate: some return home in the evening, others stay, living and sleeping on the street. It is precisely these latter children who make up, for the most part, the true street children — often coming from a situation of traditional fostering diverted from its original protective purpose: the talibé entrusted to a Quranic teacher, or the child placed with a family that exploits him for domestic labor until he runs away, in response to the abuse suffered.

Second, a finding that challenges a persistent misconception: that deterioration occurs gradually, after the fact, triggered by a specific shock — a death, a remarriage, financial hardship within the host family. These tipping points do indeed exist, and my research allows me to isolate them with precision. But in many cases, deterioration does not occur after fostering: it is present within fostering itself, from the moment the child arrives. A tradition designed to fulfill a logic of family solidarity now finds itself, in the context of large African cities, mobilized according to logics of convenience that no longer always match the actual expectations or needs of the fostered child — nor, at times, those of the receiving family. The child may then suffer the consequences of this gap from the very moment of arrival, with no subsequent triggering event required.

It is this dual understanding — the identifiable tipping points, and the deterioration sometimes already at work within fostering itself — that gave rise to the Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org: the conviction that the most rigorous scientific research can, and must, translate into concrete levers for action for the communities it studies.

The Network, moreover, no longer limits itself to fostering alone. The same traditional mechanisms that regulate family tensions around a fostered child can, once mobilized, help defuse a land conflict or intercommunity tension. This is the very essence of the traditional mediation we are now developing through the Network, in partnership with Traditional Authorities and Legitimacies across several West African countries.

Understanding a society before seeking to transform it: this is an obvious truth too often forgotten in development policies. Yet it remains the only path toward solutions that last.

Learn more about our work: enfanceafrique.org

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The post Le confiage d’enfants en Afrique de l’Ouest : une pratique traditionnelle à l’épreuve de la modernité appeared first on Réseau Enfance Afrique.

It was this observation that guided eight years of ethnographic fieldwork, conducted between Mali and several West African countries, which today form the foundation of the Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org's mission.

A Cultural Practice Between Solidarity and Vulnerability

Child fostering is not, in itself, a problematic practice. For centuries, it has organized extended family solidarity: a child entrusted to an uncle, an aunt, or a distant relative may gain access to education, vocational training, or simply support that their family of origin could not provide. In many cases documented in the field, in both Ségou and Timbuktu, fostering remains a mechanism for protection and the redistribution of resources between families.

But this same practice, when it unfolds outside any protective framework, can also become the tipping point toward situations of serious vulnerability. Our fieldwork has documented the trajectories of children fostered without any guarantee of schooling, payment, or protection — girls working as domestic help denied schooling from a very young age, boys entrusted to Quranic teachers ending up begging in the streets of Bamako, or children displaced by security crises in the North, fostered in emergency conditions without any institutional safety net.

A Blind Spot in Child Protection Policies

What stands out, after eight years of participant observation, in-depth interviews and life story collection, is the near-total absence of systematic study of this phenomenon by institutional actors — whether the State, non-governmental organizations, or international agencies. Fostering is often mentioned in passing, as one variable among others in the analysis of street children or child labor, but rarely studied in its own right, in its full cultural and social complexity.

This gap has a concrete consequence: child protection programmes, designed without a nuanced understanding of the logic underlying fostering, struggle to offer responses suited to local realities. A purely legal or strictly humanitarian approach, one that ignores the cultural dynamics at play, risks either having no effect at all, or weakening solidarity mechanisms that, when properly framed, genuinely protect children.

Toward an Approach Grounded in Field Knowledge

This is precisely the space the Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org intends to occupy. Our conviction, grounded in eight years of rigorous scientific work, is that an in-depth understanding of cultural realities is the first tool for social change in the service of childhood. Understanding why a family entrusts a child, under what conditions, and with what expectations on both sides, makes it possible to build responses that do not oppose local practices but transform them from within — drawing notably on Traditional Authorities and Legitimacies, the first witnesses and often the first regulators of these situations.

The Network today continues this documentation work, now also incorporating an essential nutritional dimension: many children fostered under precarious conditions show signs of food vulnerability that likewise remain largely invisible in official statistics.

Documenting to Protect Better

This research work only makes sense if it leads to action. This is why the Réseau EnfanceAfrique.org now supports organizations, institutions and local authorities wishing to better understand these realities in order to respond to them more effectively — through programme evaluation, training for field actors, or support in developing public policies genuinely rooted in West African cultural practices.

To discuss this work or explore a potential collaboration, contact us at contact@enfanceafrique.org.

Talibé children begging amid Bamako traffic. Exposed to the dangers of the street and denied schooling, these children illustrate the fragile boundary between traditional religious transmission and exploitation — a vulnerability still largely absent from child protection policies.

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