Senegal child beggars show limits of ‘apptivism’

Senegalese software programmer Ousseynou Khadim Beye poses with tablet computer displaying his Cross Dakar City application.(Photo: AFP)

Mamadou is a child beggar wandering the streets of Dakar, perilously darting in and out of traffic as he tries to gather enough money for his Islamic teacher to feed him.

But Mamadou is different from an estimated 30,000 boys who share his plight in Senegal. He is made of pixels, a virtual urchin created for mobile screens by app developer Ousseynou Khadim Beye.

Arcade-style gaming app Cross Dakar City was launched a year ago to great fanfare at home and abroad, setting 32-year-old Beye apart as the first Senegalese software designer to make it solo onto the charts of the Apple and Android stores.

And he featured a beggar boy for a reason. “I wanted to raise awareness by saying ‘this is not normal, we are not talking enough about it’,” he told AFP.

His Mamadou is a “talibe”, the Arabic word for student. In Senegal, boys as young as five are sent away from home to “daaras”, or Koranic schools leaving them open to abuse. Some are forced — by their teachers — to beg on the streets to earn their board.

Child beggars remain so numerous in Senegal they pass unseen, despite government pledges to eradicate the problem by 2015. “It’s a matter of being part of the decor. People are not really moved by that,” Beye told AFP. “They think it’s normal.”

Apptivism The power of tradition in this west African state, however, means few are willing to challenge the teachers, given their status and respect as Islamic scholars.

Senegal has designated April 20 as the National Talibe Day but rights workers say little has changed. The International Society for Human Rights (SDIH) marked this year by deploring the system as “a breeding ground for the sexual abuse of children.”

In February, the Senegalese authorities found 20 boys aged between six and 14 kept in chains by their Islamic teacher, or “marabout”.

So Beye decided to try a bit of “apptivisim” — creating a gaming app aimed at doing good. “My goal is to implement concrete actions for child beggars,” he said.

His virtual talibe is vintage Senegal: he hops onto traditional “pirogue” boats to cross rivers and dodges rainbow-coloured “cars rapides” chugging along a virtual street.

The game has caught on and downloads keep rolling in. The Senegalese diaspora in France and the United States, notably, got hooked on this small, however sad, reminder of home.