Concept, design, and development by AA Adamu
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Talk to everyone. Listen carefully. Nala is somewhere in here, and so is the reason nobody found her.
You have spoken to eight people. One explanation fits everything they told you. Which one?
Parents in this community lack the motivation or concern needed to vaccinate their children.
The root cause is supply: vaccines are simply not reaching this area in sufficient quantities.
Overlapping failures in resources, planning, trust, and design mean some children are passed over every single time — not by accident, but by structure.
Each chain shows how one failure leads directly to the next. One link is missing from each chain. Drag it from the pool above into the empty slot.
Chains completed: 0 / 4
Nala: “I am here.”
Nala: “You found me.”
Nala: “Why couldn't they?”
She is in the second house past the new bus stop, beside the baobab tree — the one with the blue water tank on the roof. Born at home on a Tuesday, ten months ago. Her mother named her Nala, which means successful. She has never been vaccinated. No health worker has knocked on that door. Her name does not appear on any register.
Add layers one at a time. Watch what the map reveals about who gets left behind, and why it is always the same people.
Nala was not missing.
She was missed — by a fuel budget that ran out, by a map that forgot her street existed, by a health session that ended before her mother came home, by a register that never learned her name.
She is one of an estimated 14.3 million zero-dose children worldwide. Each of them has a mother who loves them. Each of them lives in a gap that the system created and could close.
Without knowing it, you just learned the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research: a tool used by implementation practitioners and researchers to understand why some programs reach people and others do not. Here is what each person in Alafia was actually showing you.
The qualities of the programme itself that affect how well it can be delivered, including its design, adaptability, and fit with the people it is meant to serve.
Abena showed you: sessions at the wrong entrance, ending before the crowd arrives. The programme's own design excluded the people it was built for.
The social, economic, and physical conditions outside the health system that shape whether people can access services at all.
Mama Ayo and Teacher Kofi showed you: 1,600₦ in fares, no name in any register, families displaced by conflict in the north west, no one who came to the door.
The structures, resources, and organisational culture of the implementing body — what it has, what it lacks, and how it works.
Nurse Amara and Kwame showed you: one motorbike for ten districts, a fuel budget gone in August, a register that cannot name its missing children.
The capabilities, motivations, and opportunities of everyone involved — both the people delivering the programme and the people it is meant to reach.
Grandmother Efua showed you: a mother who said "yes" to protect her dignity, in a language she did not speak. Dignity is as powerful as distance.
How the programme was actually planned, adapted, and carried out — including whether communities were engaged and whether feedback was used.
Elder Mensah and Officer Bello showed you: no community entry, no current maps, no data feedback loop. A plan designed without the people it was designed for.
The people you met in Alafia are not failures. Nurse Amara rides a borrowed motorbike across ten districts. Kwame fills worn registers by hand, searching for children who were never recorded. Mama Ayo makes impossible choices every morning between food, transport, work, and care.
The failure lies elsewhere.
It lives in decisions made far from Alafia by people who never walked its roads. It lives in plans built from maps that stopped seeing the community years ago. It lives in reports written in languages many families cannot read, and in systems designed without listening to the people they were meant to serve.
Nala was never invisible.
Her home was here. Her family was here. Her community was here.
The problem was never finding Nala. The problem was that the system failed to reach her.
Nala makes those failures visible. She reveals the distance between intention and reality, between services and the people they are meant to serve. She shows us that when a child is missed by immunization, it is often a sign that she is being missed by much more.
That is why finding Nala matters.
Because once you can see her, you can start to see everyone else the system has missed.
Where Is Nala? is a game about implementation science, not a lecture about it.
Nala is a composite character, but every barrier she faces is documented and real.
Concept, design, and development by AA Adamu
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