More than 107 million children in Africa are out of school, according to UNICEF.
For children living and working on the streets, the barriers to education can be even more difficult to overcome. In Ghana, a grassroots initiative is shifting the way education is accessed by bringing learning to the doorstep of vulnerable street-connected children left behind by the traditional school system.
The busy transit hubs of Accra have become an unusual hotspot for these children, despite the risks posed by high-speed traffic. For children like 10-year-old Amina, not her real name, a typical day on the street begins with a three-kilometre commute from the slums in Madina to the busy Atomic Junction, which serves as an intersection to various central business districts in the capital.
She rarely observes basic personal hygiene, including brushing her teeth, taking a bath or changing her clothes, as she heads out. Her only aim is to survive through begging.
Like her peers, Amina approaches moving traffic with outstretched hands, asking for anything from half-drunk bottles of water to cash, which is immediately spent on food.
These activities make her vulnerable to numerous dangers, including sexual, verbal and physical abuse, severely impacting her development.
They also have a debilitating effect on her fundamental rights to education, healthcare and a chance at a safe childhood. This does not augur well for Ghana’s attainment of Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 4.
The situation has also led to a role reversal where Amina and her peers earn their living through begging to feed their parents because they are more likely to elicit compassion and benevolence.
According to reports by the Department of Social Welfare, Ghana is home to between 60,000 and 61,500 children in similar circumstances as Amina, traversing the risky nature of Accra’s busy roads to survive at the expense of their education, health and overall well-being.
A notable proportion of these children include irregular migrants from the Sahel, escaping conflict, instability and negative environmental impacts due to climate dynamics.
A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, estimates that more than 412 million children globally live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than $3 a day, while nearly 138 million children are involved in child labour. Education gaps also exist, with roughly 64 million children of primary school age remaining completely out of school globally.
Ghana’s national policy on education offers free basic education from the primary level through senior high school, as well as fee support for first-year university education.
Yet Amina and her peers’ quest for survival through their daily struggles on the street leaves little room for them to navigate the systemic barriers to educational advancement in conventional classrooms.
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection is attempting to implement an ambitious National Strategic Plan for street-connected children and young persons, but civil society advocates say the pace is too slow, calling for an acceleration from policy to action.
The local grassroots initiative is, however, taking a different approach by innovating how education is delivered to these children through its ‘Classroom on Wheels’, COW, programme.
The Benjamin Akrong Foundation and The Evangelists, a faith-based, non-discriminatory community organisation, initiated the Classroom on Wheels Project in February 2025 to meet children where they are on the streets by providing them with basic literacy, numeracy and foundational skills.
The programme functions as a coordinated mobile system designed to integrate into the daily environments of the children. It transports school infrastructure, including tables, chairs, books and other stationery, to designated locations where the children are found.
The programme is so far fostering an increasing level of enthusiasm for learning among the children.
When the project vehicle arrives, they actively gather around, helping to offload equipment and rallying their peers to get involved in setting up their own learning environment.
Selasi Agboga, one of the implementing officers of COW, said that despite initial challenges in securing the interest of the children, they have become well accustomed to the initiative.
“Now, because of their interest in education, whenever they see our car being parked around to offload the tables and chairs, you see them gathering around. They come and even go to call their colleagues to come and offload the car, and then arrange the tables and the chairs for the classes,” Agboga said.
“In the class they act normally. They are very active. They perform every task that is assigned them,” he said.
The sound of roaring motor engines, street hawkers and the associated hyper-vigilance required for survival on the street are drowned out by focused and active participation in study sessions and classroom tasks.
The initiative pairs learning with nutritional support by providing the children with a hot meal and clothing, psychological support through trust-building exercises and emotional care.
It also implements reintegration efforts aimed at reconnecting children to their families and communities.
To date, the project has successfully enrolled 40 children, with a target of reaching at least 200 street-connected children by 2028.
The initiative has so far recorded an 85 percent attendance rate among the children, with a 70 percent performance rate in Mathematics and 65 percent and 80 percent in English and Artwork, respectively.
The first batch of students are expected to be enrolled in traditional schools in September 2026.
Despite providing a vital lifeline, COW is faced with several limitations.
The programme lacks the resources to provide transitional housing or overnight shelter. This means the children must return to the streets once the classroom session is over.
“After we close from class, we go back to the streets to beg. Because currently, we are unable to provide them with shelter. All we are able to do is to provide them with feeding or stipend after every day’s lesson. In some cases, they get stranded. And some have to sleep on the street after the studies, or when it’s night,” Agboga said.
The children are malnourished and live in a state of poverty, ushering in an onslaught of prevalent health issues. Critical observations have identified numerous suspected cases of diseases including yaws, malaria and other neglected tropical diseases, as well as untreated wounds and injuries. The officers are only able to treat minor cases.
COW says it plans to secure stable funding from benevolent organisations and seek institutional partnerships with specialised agencies such as the Complementary Education Agency, a quasi-governmental institution, to ensure the social and educational components of the programme are impactful and sustainable.
This will include curriculum alignment and structured training of volunteers following planned recruitment to deliver complementary education to the children.
Education and Research Analyst Divine Kpe said the initiative aligns with the 2030 aim of not leaving any child behind in education.
He said the model could be replicated in other cities in Ghana. However, the lack of concrete and disaggregated data on street-connected children poses a significant challenge.
According to Kpe, the absence of data distinguishing Ghanaian children from non-Ghanaians, who are mostly immigrants, creates a major policy gap for targeted and tailored interventions.
“I am happy that they are taking steps to collaborate with the Complementary Education Agency,” Kpe said, adding that the agency has the ability to provide accelerated intervention for out-of-school children who could eventually be integrated into the traditional school system.
Kpe said the initiative could be unsuccessful on a large scale unless critical steps are taken to economically empower parents and reverse the bread-winning role being played by the children.
For now, however, Amina’s newly developed abilities to write her own name and simple sentences, calculate her earnings for the day, and her newfound interest in art and creative skills set a foundation for her potential.
However, until robust mechanisms are put in place, her next step towards a defined future remains uncertain.
