In Cameroon, 1.4 million children need educational assistance, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports. According to the UN agency, the said children have no access to “quality education”, with more than 600,000 of them being in an extreme situation in the North-West and South-West (Noso) regions grappling with a separatist crisis since 2017. 

Between January and July 2023, OCHA recorded 13 violent incidents perpetrated in schools or against pupils by armed groups in the Noso. The agency indicates that 2,245 schools are yet to open for the current academic year. "In September, during the two-week state of emergency (September 4-17) declared by non-state armed groups, schools were forced to close and several people were killed, abducted or physically assaulted," reports the United Nations (UN Info) newsletter.

Insecurity has also affected the quality of children's education in the Far North region, due to incursions into certain localities by the Islamic sect Boko Haram. The OCHA does not give a figure for the number of schools that have had to close as a result of this security crisis. All we know is that 482,000 children are not receiving quality education in the Far North region. Not all of those children are out of school, however. Some of them are just disrupted in their academic activities by the upsurge of flooding in the region.  

Michel Ange Nga