Combating Street Children in Tanzania: Challenges and Prospects: A Case Study of Kinondoni Municipality, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper is based on study that was conducted to  explore challenges with eradicating the problem of street children in Tanzania. Street children is a sensitive and significant social and human rights problem growing in the world today.  In Tanzania, street children are found in almost all urban centres and the situation is getting worse in Dar-es-Salaam, the biggest city in Tanzania. While a number of scholarly research studies have been done regarding the problem of street children, empirical data with regards to challenges with eradicating the problem of street children are limited in Tanzania. It is based on this gap of knowledge from the literatures that promoted  this paper which also  is also informed by Durkheim's structural functionalism theory.The study employed qualitative approach in combination with case study strategy where by data were purposively collected through in-depth interview. The primary sources of data included:  street children, social welfare officers, community development officers and ward executive officers. The collected data were analysed using thematic analysis model to obtain themes.Overall the findings established that poverty, poor planning, weak legislations and weak enforcement of legislations, breakdown of traditional safety nets and HIV/AIDS have been cited as   major challenges with eradicating street children in Tanzania. This paper recommends that the government should improve household income of poor households, review the existing laws and policies protecting the welfare of children, conducting awareness raising campaigns on the care and support of the most vulnerable children and combat HIV/AIDS.