Small Feet, Busy Roads: Why Ghana is failing its children every school morning

As a professional law student interning at the Madina magistrate court, I was one morning rushing to court because I was running late when I found myself driving behind a motorbike with a child about five years old, holding flimsily onto the shirt of the biker. He was wearing a helmet, but she wasn’t. This was around the ARS roundabout.

I watched him park at the nursery school right by the roundabout (name withheld). I was too late to stop and offer a caution, but I knew I couldn’t let it slide. The scene replayed in my mind all day throughout the proceedings in court.

So on my way back, I couldn’t bypass the school without reporting what I had seen. I stopped by and told the headmistress. Her response was that this was a normal practice, and that they had already cautioned such parents and guardians about the safety precautions, but to no avail.

Heading home, I pondered what could be done to prevent such children from facing looming danger. Article 28(1)(d) of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, says: “Children and young persons receive special protection against exposure to physical and moral hazards.” We also have an entire Children’s Act, 1998 (Act 560), meant to protect children from any and all forms of harm. It seems this provision, like many others, remains a thing confined to our laws and not to the ground, a preserve for a section of the public: the rich.

Their children get driven to school in comfort and with protection. The story is different for many others in Ghanaian society. My earlier account is not a one off.

Children being exposed to road dangers is a common sight on the streets of Accra. Driving to town every morning is tormenting for me, as I have to endure the sight of a six or seven year old stepping off the pavement alone, or holding the hand of a younger sibling to cross a busy road with no marked crossing, no signal, and no adult in sight. It is not surprising, then, that according to the National Road Safety Authority, the country recorded 952 child deaths in road crashes between 2019 and 2021, 434 of them aged 10 to 17, and 188 aged 0 to 3.