Child Sponsor Mali

Child labour is widespread in Mali, predominantly in the agricultural sector, and many children children are trafficked to Cote d'Ivoire to work on cotton and cocoa plantations or, if girls, as domestic workers in private homes. The situation is not much better in the country's own capital, Bamako, with thousands of vulnerable children living on the streets and working in unprotected, manual labour jobs to survive. In 2020, the adult literacy rate for Mali was 30.76% (though an increase from 19% in 1998). With a population of 22.59 million (2022), life expectancy in Mali is 58.94 years (2021) and there are some 75,000 children orphaned through AIDS alone out of a total orphan population of 710,000, although access to anti-retroviral therapy has improved noticeably over recent years.

3.5 million people in Mali don't have clean water and 11 million people don't have a decent toilet but the government has committed to provide everyone in Mali with clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene by 2030. Chronic malnutrition among children is a serious public health issue in Mali, affecting more than 26% of all those under 5 years of age. According to UNICEF, nearly half of all deaths of children under five in the country are linked to undernutrition. There are few child sponsor programs in Mali, and those that do exist are heavily focussed on education, ensuring young people can develop the knowledge and skills to build a better future for themselves and their communities; clean water projects; health access and providing immediate, practical assistance to the 155,000 Malians who have fled to the south of the country to escape the developing violence and chaos in the north. You can help when you sponsor a child in Mali.