Kiddies on the African Killing Fields

By Andrew Field

By late 2025, the African continent remains riddled with overlapping wars. Children are being pulled into armed conflict across Africa with a persistence that should shame the African political leadership and the African Union. Kids are snatched from classrooms, farms and market stalls. Some are abducted at night.

Many of Africa’s children are threatened, coerced or bribed with drugs, cigarettes, food, false promises — even young maidens. This is rape-gang grooming’s equivalent of Africa, but for many, those children living in abject poverty are motivated to exploit conflict for gain. Joining armed groups is a desperate means of survival. Warlords and military commanders know it and value their child ‘fodder’ for their obedience, expendability and low cost. They are easy to indoctrinate.

Reflecting on current African conflict, Sudan plunged into full-scale conflict in April 2023, when the national army clashed with the Rapid Support Forces. Violence spread across Khartoum and Darfur. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, eastern provinces like North Kivu and Ituri have faced renewed offensives since 2022, adding to decades of instability.

Ethiopia’s Tigray war officially ended in 2022, yet fighting continues in Amhara and Oromia. The Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger) has seen a steady jihadist surge since 2015, compounded by military coups between 2020 and 2023. Somalia still battles al-Shabaab. Nigeria grapples with Boko Haram, ISWAP, banditry and communal violence across the Middle Belt.

Within SADC, Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado insurgency has persisted since 2017, spilling into neighbouring provinces. The Central African Republic remains fragmented despite the signing of nominal peace accords. Together, these small wars expose over 100 million Africans to chronic violence. Children in Africa are among the most vulnerable. United Nations data show Africa accounts for roughly 40% of all verified child-soldier cases worldwide; over 21,000 recruits in the past five years alone.

West and Central Africa bear the heaviest burden. Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, the DRC, Somalia and the Sahel states record the highest child enlistment rates. Structural factors amplify the crisis. Forty per cent of Africa’s population is under fifteen. More than 118 million children live within 50 kilometres of active battle zones. Recruitment is routine.

Vile Islamist insurgencies, civil wars and collapsing state authority create fertile ground for exploitation. Poverty, hunger and mass displacement strip families of protective barriers. Children are pushed toward coercion or enlistment just to survive. While child soldiering occurs elsewhere, Africa’s scale, duration and complexity make it the most afflicted region.

In northern Mozambique, children are systematically drawn into insurgency roles — cooks, porters and increasingly, fighters. Abductions from villages and camps leave survivors traumatised, out of school and unsupported. Cross-border flows spread recruitment into neighbouring provinces, straining fragile Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) capacities.

History offers no comfort. During Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, children served as mujibhas (boys) and chimbwidos (girls). They acted as couriers, scouts and aides. Their experience (often romanticised by ‘struggle’ politicians and gullible historians) mirrors today’s reality: forced participation, sexual exploitation and the loss of childhood.  African politics today still uses its youth for destructive intimidation and political violence with impunity.

UNICEF estimates that over the past two decades, more than 100,000 children have been recruited globally. A substantial share comes from Africa. Survivors consistently ask for three things: safety, education and a way to earn a living; something Africa’s conflict zones can rarely provide without the West pouring in aid.  But that trend is coming to an end. Without multi-year, locally led programmes, the risk of relapse into violence for these children remains high.

In all this, verification is hampered by insecurity and official concealment. The actual toll of children in conflict may be higher. Boys become fighters, scouts and executioners. Girls serve as porters, cooks, victims of sexual slavery and forced marriage, and increasingly, combatants. Armed groups use brutal initiations, drugs and psychological abuse to sever family ties and create loyal foot soldiers. Some governments sponsor youth militias to fill security gaps, blurring moral and legal lines.

Beyond Africa, child soldiering persists in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and Colombia. Armed groups like ISIS and the Houthis recruit thousands. Myanmar’s military and ethnic insurgents continue to enlist minors. Colombia’s dissident factions target rural youth. In Gaza, Hamas has been cited by the UN for grave violations, including military-style training and use of children as lookouts and messengers. These practices are troubling, but Africa remains the epicentre of this abuse.

International law classifies child recruitment as a grave war crime. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has the capacity to prosecute, and states could tighten domestic laws. Yet prosecutions are vanishingly rare. The global record is shameful. Despite decades of abuse and tens of thousands of victims, the ICC has convicted just three individuals: Thomas Lubanga, Germain Katanga and Dominic Ongwen.

Three convictions in twenty years. That’s not justice. That’s a rounding error. That is the sum total of justice for one of the most widespread crimes in modern warfare. Treaties and tribunals have failed to match rhetoric with resolve. Evidence is hard to gather or is lost. Witnesses are intimidated and silenced. Perpetrators protected by the victors and the vanquished indemnified. The silence of major institutions (especially the United Nations and its agencies) amounts to complicity. Political deals shield perpetrators.

Over the past two decades, the African Union has produced a flurry of resolutions, frameworks and policy papers on child protection in conflict zones. Most notably its 2019 and 2020 endorsements of a Child Protection Architecture within the Peace and Security Council. These documents promise to mainstream child safety across peace operations and post-conflict recovery.  Africa is not holding its breath.  The African Union has mastered the art of resolution without resolve — a theatre of concern performed for donors, not children.

Yet beyond the comfort of conference halls and communiqués, little has changed. The African Union lacks enforcement power, prosecutorial reach, and the political will to confront member states complicit in child recruitment. Its peace missions are routinely underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped to protect children on the ground.  More sinister is the fact that African Union member states often block enforcement mechanisms; sabotaging initiatives to protect political elites.

The United Nations’s glib endorsement, for its part, has welcomed these initiatives but failed to demand results. Together, they have built a scaffolding of good intentions with no foundation. In the face of mass abductions, sexual slavery and battlefield conscription, Africa’s children remain unprotected—sacrificed to the inertia of continental diplomacy and the cowardice of global governance.

This leaves NGOs bearing the burden. NGOs are often praised as the engines of protection. But with just three ICC convictions and tens of thousands of children still trapped in combat roles, that praise rings hollow. Without flexible, multi-year funding and political backing, their impact remains limited.  Donors always speak of benchmarks. But when the benchmark is silence, atrocity becomes policy

All too often, the NGOs usually tackle the problem after the horse has bolted.  They concentrate on post-conflict rehabilitation.  Effective reintegration begins with child survivors. Programmes are offered providing psychosocial support, education and economic inclusion. Community-led, multi-year initiatives work best. In Africa, such support is rare.

Clearly, there needs to be a paradigm shift from the hot air in the corridors of the United Nations and African Union to a more dynamic and strategic conflict intervention regime. Accountability must be strategic. But blanket prosecutions can and often will derail peace. By that same token, blanket amnesties normalise atrocity. A phased model (truth-seeking, reparations, targeted prosecution) may seem to offer the path forward, but not in Africa.

The time is right to hold African leaders accountable for their war crimes and complicity. The children of Africa are not cannon fodder. They are citizens and the future of Africa. If the African Union cannot protect them, and if the United Nations cannot prosecute their abusers, then both must also answer for their failure. The shame is not in the suffering. It is in the silence.