Map West Africa

Challenges & Millennium Development Goals

People in West Africa face many challenges. Since the region is so big, we’ll look mainly at Ghana and Sierra Leone as case studies.

• Poverty
• Education
• Health
• Sustainable Development

Bring West Africa Alive in Your School and Classroom

School-Wide Activities

Fact of the Day

Suggest students start off each morning announcement with an engaging West African fact, statistic or piece of information.

Assembly with Attitude

Let students plan the next school assembly. Have them incorporate talk shows, debate panels, or any other creative ways of sharing West Africa with the student body.

Poetry Hour

Have students research some poems told by West Africa’s griots. Have them find poems that paint a picture of life and challenges in West Africa. Then, have them recite these poems at a school-wide coffee house or talent show. Allow them to get creative by suggesting they work with a group to add West African drama or dance to their performances.

Subject-Specific Activities

Geography

Put together a PowerPoint of the flags of West Africa. Divide the class into two, and each time a new flag appears on the overhead the first group to call out the matching country name wins a point.

Math

Have students figure out the time differences between their hometown and the capital city of a West African country like Ghana’s Accra or Sierra Leone’s Freetown. If it’s 8 a.m. here, and school is just beginning, what time is it there and what might kids your students’ ages be doing?

Language Arts

Have each student adopt a personality from the region: a child laborer, a musical performer, a teacher, etc. Then, have students write a letter in character. “Mail” the letters to other students in the class so that different ideas and perspectives are shared. If the letters are good, students could take the exercise one step further and mail their letter to a friend or family member.

Read and Teach the Student Websites

We’ve also created websites especially for your students, each of which provides additional information about West Africa. Visit these sites, specific for elementary and secondary schools, to see West Africa from a student’s perspective and to absorb the information yourself.

• Website for Elementary Students—focus on West Africa
• Website for High School Students—focus on West Africa

Teaching West Africa

Here are some ways you can use the student sites to teach about West Africa:

1. Read through the “Welcome to West Africa” section of the website together. Talk about some of the ideas presented.

• Secondary students: What do students know about “child soldiers”?
• Secondary students: If West Africa has goods like gold and oil, why would most people there not be able to benefit from them?
• Elementary and secondary students: What do your students think West Africa looks like? Have them draw a picture that includes the “steamy jungles” and “hot beaches” and anything else they’ve learned about the region so far.

2. For the “Culture Connection” section of the website, see if you can get together some hand drums to bring Into the Classroom. Try the school’s music department, ask students if they have one or two they could bring in or check with local cultural groups to see if they could contribute (you may even be able to get a volunteer hand-drummer to come in and perform). Play music with the students—no skills are required, they’ll find their rhythm. Talk about the importance of drums to West African culture.

3. For the “Poverty” section of the website, set up a challenge where students get to be a West African child. Have students break into groups, with each group adopting the role of a child affected by poverty in West Africa: a child laborer, a trafficked child, a sick child with no access to health care. Have each group brainstorm the effects of poverty on their child. In order to really get into the role, have one person share the issues in the first person with the class. For example, “I am a child laborer. Because I work all day, I don’t have time to go to school.” When you’re finished, you could read them this story about a child in West Africa.