In the hubbub of children’s chatter, nine-year-old Leila Coulibaly deftly tunes her violin ahead of a rehearsal by Côte d’Ivoire’s first philharmonic orchestra. She is among almost 140 children who make up the ensemble based in the rural northern town of Odienne.
They gather as an orchestra once a week but every day some youngsters, aged six to 16, are picked up by minibus and brought to a hotel. There, they practise for over two hours incorporating traditional instruments like the balafon, a type of xylophone, and djembe drums.
“I want to be a professional musician because the orchestra changed my life,” Leila said. Hundreds of kilometres (miles) away from the bustling metropolis of Abidjan, Odienne relies heavily on agriculture, sometimes involving child labour.
Poverty and high unemployment make the future uncertain for many young people in Côte d’Ivoire.