They come to Europe to play for AC Milan or Paris St-Germain, but the reality for many talented young African football players, children not much older than nine, is that they will find themselves selling fake handbags on the streets. As the world marvels at the skills on display at African Nations Cup.
It is breakfast time in the slums of Jamestown, outside the Ghanaian capital, Accra. From underneath corrugated tin shacks and slum tarpaulins come the metallic clatter of early morning chores and the promise of plantains and hot milk.
Defying their mothers, the local children are already on the beach playing football; they kick tightly wound balls of rags and elastic bands among piles of shattered bricks, shards of asbestos and broken glass, the Guardian reported.
In the watery light of dawn their skinny chests bear the torn strips and faded club crests of teams from across Europe: Schalke, Ajax, Torino, Portsmouth, Benfica.
Behind the children, a weather-beaten billboard poster of Michael Essien , Ghanaian international football player, stands guard over the foul-littered bay. Holding out a ball dotted with black stars, his country’s national symbol, the Ghana and Chelsea midfielder beckons fans to “Be Proud“ and help Accra’s city fathers with a clean-up of the city in preparation for this month’s African Nations Cup.
By mid-afternoon there are still many skipping school, or their chores, as they dream of becoming the next African millionaire to play in the Champions League for Chelsea. And, as the afternoon passes and the heat recedes, every spare patch of land in Accra, from dusty railway sidings to disused quarry floors, becomes dotted with young football players.
These are not mere kickabouts. They are the unlicensed football ’academies’ of Accra, which have sprung up in response to the rising profile of African footballers in Europe.
According to the Confederation of African Football, the sport’s governing body in the continent, all such institutions must be registered with the local government or football association.
The reality in Ghana and neighboring Ivory Coast is that the greater the success of West African players in Europe, the more unaccredited academies spring up.
Most demand fees from the children’s parents and extended families, who often take them out of normal schooling to allow them to concentrate on football full-time. Since having a professional footballer in the family would be the financial equivalent of a lottery win, many reckon the risk to their child’s education worth taking.
Some even sell their family homes and move to the city in order to enroll their children.
There are an estimated 500 illegal football academies operating in Accra alone.
Thousands more are spread across Ghana. Many are run by the roadside; most have no proper training facilities. With biblical names such as ’Sons of Moses’ and ’Lovers of Christ’, each will have its own tatty bibs or T-shirts to distinguish it from the others.
At the children’s side, egging them on to run, pass, think quicker, will be a legion of unlicensed agents and coaches.
Ninety percent of the academies in Accra and Abidjan--the principal city of Ivory Coast--are run by local men with limited experience of the game.
Most described themselves as former footballers; but none was able to produce proof of his career. They are intent on finding one thing only: the next Essien or Didier Drogba. The next multi-million-pound golden ticket.
Coaches, as well as European and Arab middlemen, haggle over the best players, signing some as young as seven on tightly binding pre-contracts--effectively buying them from their families--with the hope of making thousands of dollars selling the boys on to clubs in Europe. In other cases, they extort the cost of passage from their families.
Many take the deeds on houses and even family jewelry in return for their services. This process of exploitation is raising alarm among West Africa-based NGOs including Save the Children and Caritas.
Tony Baffoe, the former Ghana captain, now an ambassador for this year’s African Nations Cup, admits that ’the trafficking of children to play football is a reality we must all face’. ’There must be better control of illegal academies across Africa,’ Baffoe continues.

Peru will use the full force of the law to combat begging.

Peru ’s Ministry of Women & Social Development (MIMDES) will carry out the first “raid“ of parents who rent or use their children by dressing them in rags and have them beg in the streets, announced minister Susana Pinilla.
Although she did not mention where these raids would take place exactly, Pinilla explained that a ministerial group was evaluating the punishment bad parents would receive for these acts against children’s rights, reported Livinginperu.com.
“Any person that uses a child for these activities will receive a serious punishment, this is to avoid the use of children for begging on the streets in different ways, for example, begging on a corner, selling on the streets or used as ’mules’“, she stated.
She said the Ministry of Women would not allow children to work because this was a commitment made in the Free Trade Agreement between Peru and the United States.
“We are firm on this subject, it is better that Peru’s society understands the consequences of their actions, because we will use all the law’s power to avoid this situation“, she stressed.
On previous occasions, this initiative was named “Campaign against begging“, in which Peru’s National Police along with the Public Ministry and the Ministry of Women took in abandoned street kids and placed them in the care of the National Institute of Family Welfare.

Japan plans a more than 10-fold increase in the number of Japanese-language schools it runs abroad, hoping to tap into a growing interest in its pop culture, an official said.
The move is part of Japan’s efforts to promote its “soft power“ as the nation seeks a greater global role and faces intensifying competition from emerging economies in its core export industries, AFP said.
A panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said that the Japanese government directly operated only 10 language schools overseas, much lower than the number run by several other major countries.
Japan “will gradually increase the number of Japanese-language schools abroad to more than 100,“ said Nobuyuki Watanabe, a foreign ministry official.
“Ten government-backed schools is too small in number compared with the 950 French schools, 126 British-backed schools and 188 Chinese schools abroad,“ he said.
He said Japan would set up the new schools, partly through tie-ups with local universities, over the three years starting from 2008 fiscal year that begins in April.
Some 2.98 million people overseas were studying Japanese in 2006, most of them going to universities and privately managed schools, according to a survey by the quasi-governmental Japan Foundation.
Previously, most foreigners studying Japanese were motivated by an interest in doing business in the world’s second largest economy.
“But recent trend is that people start learning Japanese because they are interested in Japanese pop culture such as manga and animation,“ Watanabe said.

More than one million children have no access to a computer at home in UK.

British parents could be required to provide their children with high-speed internet access under plans being drawn up by ministers in partnership with some of the country’s leading IT firms.
Jim Knight, the schools minister, said he is in talks with companies such as Microsoft, BT, Sky, Virgin and RM to help close the widening achievement gap between pupils from the richest and poorest families. More than one million children have no access to a computer at home, the Guardian reported.
The initiative is part of a major push which could also see the parents of every secondary school student given access to continuous online updates on their child’s lessons, performance and behavior as early as next year. So-called “real-time reporting“, which was first mooted in the government’s children’s plan last month, could be extended to primary schools within two years.
In an interview with the Guardian, Knight signalled that the government was putting pressure on IT firms to bring down the cost of equipment if internet connections are in effect made compulsory for nearly six million children.
Knight said real-time reporting of a child’s progress, via a school intranet and/ or directly through each student’s designated personal tutor, would mean parents “can start to have a proper conversation and get properly involved in that child’s learning“.
That could come in 2009 for secondary schools, Knight said, with primary schools a year or two later.

A child in the heights of Tochal, northern Tehran.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party on Saturday stepped up a drive for tougher action against young criminals, challenging its center-left rival to consider proposals ranging from higher sentences to easier expulsion of immigrant offenders.
Crime committed by young offenders--particularly immigrants--has dominated German politics over the past week after a senior Merkel ally, Hesse state governor Roland Koch, focused on the issue in his campaign to win re-election Jan. 27, said AP.
Merkel and leaders of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) called for a package of measures including boot camps and so-called “warning-shot arrests“ under which youths given suspended sentences would spend a brief period behind bars as a deterrent.
They said the maximum prison sentence for juveniles should be raised from 10 to 15 years and argued that offenders aged 18-21 should generally be tried as adults rather than, as is often the case, juveniles.
In a 10-page policy statement, the CDU argued for laws to be changed so that foreign citizens sentenced to a year or more in prison could be expelled from Germany, rather than three years at present.

US lawmakers are visiting plantations in cocoa-rich Ivory Coast this week to evaluate its progress in establishing a certification system against child labor, a senior Ivorian official said.
Senators Bernard Sanders and Thomas Harkin along with congressman Eliot Engel are in the West African nation, the world’s largest cocoa-producer, January 7 to 9, AFP said.
Their visit comes ahead of a July 2008 certification deadline to ensure cocoa heading to the United States--the third largest importer of Ivorian cocoa--has not been produced with child labor.
Harkin and Engel are the authors of a 2005 protocol established between the American government, the chocolate industry and cocoa-producing countries that obliges them to show child labor has not been used in any stage of production. Non-governmental organizations have accused
Ivory Coast of abusive use of children in the country’s
plantations.
One 2005 study said as many as 200,000 children worked in Ivorian plantations, with three-quarters of them handling pesticides. Still, the study noted most of the children worked for their families.
The fact most children were offspring of cocoa producers proved “this is not about slavery but about transmitting know-how,“ although possibly under adverse conditions, said Amouan Acquah, head of SSTE, an Ivorian agency attached to the prime minister’s office that tracks child labor.

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