The Cameroon pupils who risk being shot if they go back to school

A school ban enforced by separatist rebels has affected 600,000 children in English-speaking areas

The lessons at Seraphine Akwa's house were supposed to be secret. She had been teaching at a primary school in Bamenda, in anglophone Cameroon, but repeated threats had forced the headmaster to shut the school's doors.

The threats were from the "Amba boys", separatists who have been fighting a two-year battle with Cameroon's francophone government to break off and form their own state, Ambazonia. They enforced a school boycott to protest against educational injustices against English-speakers.