Students in the central region of Daloa, Côte d'Ivoire © ONUCI
I was reading the news and thought I wanted to research on the electricity problems in Benin, but I came across an article focusing on Côte d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) that got to me more. Apparently, due to the economic crisis following the rebellion in 2002 there has been massive unemployment. As a result, girls are turning to sex with the teachers to get better grades and money and sex with strangers to get money to pay schools fees, at times with the blessing of their parents. It started out with a story of a girl who would find people to have sex with in exchange for money on the internet.
This article also linked to another article from October of 2008 titled “Sexually-transmitted grades’ kills quality education” that discusses how widespread and common the situation of students (both male and female) having sex with teachers is in West Africa (not just Côte d’Ivoire). It is so common that students have even come up with a lexicon for the actions.
This article came after Learn Without Fear, and interesting organization that people should check out, released their report on Sexual Exploitation in West Africa on “Increasing visibility and promoting policy action to tackle sexual exploitation in and around schools in Africa”. It is available as a free PDF download from their site and is only 32 pages.
Anyway, I am going to go finish reading the report, but it is all very interesting. I am not sure how widespread this situation is, and neither are the writers of the report as there weren’t official statistics kept at the time the report was written. Hopefully though, the heightened awareness will lead to action and preventive measures, and the social situation in the countries where this is happening will improve so families and children don’t have to turn to these type of practices just to try and get an education.