NEWS POST: Child Beggar To Hero: Videogame Shows Suffering Of Senegal Street Children

The adventure you don't choose. (Image via Cross Dakar City)

Barefoot, a bucket under one arm, Senegalese child beggar Mamadou dodges cars, taxis and buses on the chaotic streets of Dakar as he searches for his parents in the hope of going home.

Mamadou is the fictional star of "Cross Dakar City", a mobile videogame which aims to raise awareness of the plight of tens of thousands of children in Senegal who are exploited and forced to beg in the streets by teachers at Koranic schools.

Some parents in Senegal and neighboring countries including Guinea-Bissau, who lack the money to bring up their children, send them to Islamic schools, or daaras, in Dakar - expecting them to receive food, shelter and teachings from the Koran.

But rights groups say the children, known as talibe, are largely exploited by abusive teachers as a way to make money.

Ousseynou Khadim Bèye studied software engineering in Dakar and created the game in his spare time from his job for an energy firm in Paris

"I wanted to highlight the dangers facing the talibe - they face beatings, kidnappings and sexual abuse," the game's creator Ousseynou Khadim Bèye told the Thomson Reuters Foundation ahead of International Day for Street Children on April 12.

"They also live in terrible conditions, lack access to electricity or water and have very little food," said Bèye, 32, who studied software engineering in Dakar and created the game in his spare time from his job for an energy firm in Paris.

The game, modeled on the 1980s traffic-dodging arcade hit Frogger, sees players guide Mamadou across Dakar's streets while avoiding getting struck by yellow taxis, horse-drawn carts and car rapides - Senegal's iconic colorful mini-buses.

"Cross Dakar City" has been downloaded 50,000 times by mobile users since it was released in May 2015, and Bèye hopes it will foster fresh debate among politicians and the public.

More than 50,000 children are estimated to be in abusive daaras in Senegal, and face punishments such as beatings with whips, wood and rope if they fail to bring in 2,000 CFA francs (US$3) per day, according to Human Rights Watch.

50,000 People Have Downloaded This Mobile Game About Street Children In Senegal

In Senegal, in Dakar alone, there are 50,000 child beggars. Many of them are Talibé children, or children who are studying in daaras (Koranic schools), who often become prey of exploitation, and are forced to work and beg on the streets. Their life is terrifyingly challenging—so much so it became the subject of an action game.

Cross Dakar City, is an mobile game created by Ousseynou Khadim Bèye, a 32-year-old engineer from Senegal, to raise awareness of the tragic conditions of Senegal’s child beggars. In the game, which is free to download, one of them has to escape the city’s street and walk all the way to his parents’ home, in the country.

The user plays Mamadou, a child beggar who has to cross 16 levels of water bodies, forests and—what’s hardest—city traffic, to get home in one piece. Through the game, he can get gifts that increase his strength, as well as encounter further perils, such as land mines. At the end of this little hero’s journey are his parents.

“Avoiding traffic is just one of many difficulties that [Talibé children] face,” Bèye says in a video presenting the game. “As in reality,” he says, Mamadou’s “chances of surviving such a journey aren’t quite in his favor.” So far, Cross Dakar City has been downloaded nearly 50,000 times across platforms. It’s a finalist of Best of Online Activism awards in the section Tech for Good.

Bèye—who, Reuters reports (STORY 1), created the game in his free time while working at an energy firm in Paris—says he wants to use Cross Dakar City prod international NGOs as well as the Senegalese government to help the child beggars. The engineer, who plans to develop a 3D version of the game, wants to capitalize on the visibility gained by this project to build a game design studio that creates games inspired by African culture.

Originally published in Reuters (STORY 1) and Quartz Africa (STORY 2)