In 2005, the Guardian set out to chronicle the lives of 10 babies born within months of one another in 10 countries across Africa.
The project was founded on simple principles: to follow the progress of families whose daily existence is rarely examined; to put human faces and stories to epochal global initiatives such as the millennium development goals; and to determine just how well the world keeps its promises to the continent.
At five-year intervals, we have tried to follow the progress of the children as they grow up in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia.
In the case of Sijjin Kuang, a boy born in the Sudanese town of Rumbek on 16 May 2005, that proved impossible. Sijjin, who weighed just 3kg, died seven days after his birth.
He succumbed to malaria, or an airway infection, or tetanus picked up from the dirty razor used to cut his umbilical cord – or perhaps all three.
Had Sijjin lived – had God not called him back, as his grandmother put it – he would now be a citizen of Africa’s youngest country, South Sudan.
Of the other nine children, we understand that Prosper Mumba from Lusaka in Zambia is doing well, but his family declined to participate this year. So we revisit the lives of eight of the children, four boys and four girls, who have faced their own challenges: sick or absent parents, illness, displacement, political upheaval, and problems getting an education.
They have also lived through a time of dizzying change, of debt relief and excited talk of “Africa rising”; of exploding mobile phone use across the continent and dramatic progress in the global fight against disease.
And, like all 10-year-olds, they have already begun to dream of the future. Some hope to become doctors or teachers, others soldiers or footballers.
Five years after we last saw them, in 2010, the children and their families tell us about what has changed and what hasn’t, what has got better and what’s now worse.
