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16 Africa telegraph 25 October - 09 November 2020

Night shift child labour in West Africa, West Africa News

the key to global £100-billion

chocolate industry By Buki Ojo

Abidjan, Ivory Coast - Children in West
Africa are working day and night to grow
a £100-billion chocolate industry that is
evergrowing in Europe and Africa.

A report commissioned by the United
States Department of Labour has re-
vealed the staggering level of dangerous
child labour in the lucrative chocolate in-
dustry.

The report from the University of Chicago
researchers found that more than 1 mil-
lion children in Ghana and the neighbour-
ing country, Côte d’Ivoire, were working
in the industry. Another major study of
the issue, published in Fortune maga-
zine in the United States in March 2016,
concluded that approximately 2.1 million
children in West Africa do dangerous and
physically taxing work of harvesting co-
coa.
The University of Chicago report found
vast numbers of children across Ghana
and the Ivory Coast work night shifts,
clear land, carry heavy loads, and make
use of sharp tools to enhance the indus-
try, which is expected to grow nearly 5%
each year until 2027.

Nearly half of all children (45%) between
the ages of five and 17 living in agricul-
tural households in Ghana and the Ivory
Coast are working in cocoa production,
the research group NORC from the Uni-
versity of Chicago said in its report. Major chocolate producers such as Nestlé, Mars and others are (directly or indirectly) supporting child labour
Researchers found that in total, more Major chocolate manufacturers including cut 70% of the worst forms of child labour even after twenty years after they prom-
than 1 million children are harvesting co- Nestlé and Mars signed an agreement by 2020, and a year later pledged £2 mil- ised to.
coa for chocolate in those countries. with members of the US Congress in lion to a new partnership with the Interna-
2001 to end child labour on cocoa farms tional Labour Organisation. Twenty years after the £100 billion choc-
In 2010, major chocolate companies in West Africa. olate industry pledged to tackle child
vowed to cut 70% of the worst forms of What is worrying is that the chocolate labour in cocoa-growing communities,
child labour by 2020. In 2010, the same companies vowed to industry has failed to resolve this issue, a new report sponsored by the US gov-
ernment reveals that the problem has
worsened.

Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, together, produce nearly 60% of the world’s cocoa each year, but the sad thing is that The cocoa tree, with ripe fruits
over 1 million children are forced to work as labourers on cocoa farms in these countries. where the beans are extracted