kasozi |1

Nicholas Kasozi
June 18,2016
Professor Ogden

Child labor in Africa

Child labor in Africa is the manner in which the children are subjected to employment in
a way that deprives them of their childhood. Africa reports the highest number of cases of child
labor; this quandary is rampant in Sub-Saharan Africa where 40% of children between ages of 514 engage in labor as an expedient of livelihood (Strang &patricia, 5). The aim of this paper is to
discuss the challenges facing Africa that embolden the spread of child labor, the
recommendations for change and impact to the society. This is always deleterious to their phrenic
and their physical development. It is in Africa that there is the worlds utmost commonness level
of child manual work. The predicament is rigorous in the Sub-Saharan part of Africa where it is
anticipated that in excess of 40% of all children between the bracket ages of 514 work
strenuously as laborers for perpetuated use. In total, they are estimated to be about 48 million
kids. In this century, we have about twenty-five percent of sub-Saharan Africa's population
children. The economic and political struggles that transpire time and time again are gradually
decrementing their chance for them to prosper in their country and for the countries in Africa to
grow economically and convivially in the future. As you can optically discern that is a quandary
because while children in other countries either have a chance of a childhood they are not given
that luxury because they are endeavoring to survive for that day because they do not how
tomorrow is going to be akin to .there are some countries that are endeavoring to avail stop the

kasozi |2
spread of child labor and endeavor to bring attention to it and America is one of them. The
amalgamated states ostracize imports from developing countries that are engendered with the
avail of child labor thus not availing the country's economic magnification. The countries that
condone child labor do not put their money and effort in the health and the edification of the
younger generation thus sanctioning child labor to perpetuate to this day. So when they cannot
peregrinate to school the other option is to work so they could provide for themselves and their
family and the cycle keeps perpetuating. In the next section, we are going to optically canvass
the causes and effect of this atrocity and why it perpetuates to this day. One of the major factors
attributed to child labor in Africa is penuriousness (Canagarajah 88). Penuriousness is well
thought-out as the principal substratum of child labor in Africa. The International Labor
Organization estimate that crop growing is the most immensely colossal employer of kids hence
child labor in Africa. Immense more preponderant components are not paid family workers. The
conception of child labor, however, is not unique in Africa. An astronomically immense figure of
children has additionally had the same situation in America and Europe as well as any other
places in the world. This is verbally expressed to have been excruciating prior to the mid of the
20th century. The children in these components of the world have too worked in agriculture and
domestic tasks or situations. It has been by the Philomaths that this work being done by children,
concretely in rural areas, was in the past a form of coaching and vocational learning. This was
where children erudite the arts and skills from their guardian or parents, and as adults went on to
work in the same transmissible vocation. This act of child labor has been witnessed in the
countries like Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, and lastly in Nigeria.
In Nigeria, it was estimated in the year 2006 that there were approximately 15 million children
under the age of 14 who were laborers or subjected to cumbersomely hefty obligation works or

kasozi |3
tasks. Many of these children worked in areas that exposed them to hazardous conditions. This
was like working in places that exposed them to cold, chemicals that may cause health
quandaries and objects that may injure the children. It was estimated that prodigious or a sizably
voluminous number of these children just like in the other components of the world worked in
agricultural farms or fields and in the informal economy. Household auxiliaries or maids were
the least perceptible form of child labor, and perpetually again sexually beleaguered. Along with
public places, informal economy, and street vending engaged 64% of the children under child
labor (Grootaert et al. 127). If we optically canvass the major regions, we optically discern that,
of all the regions, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest child labor rate.According to International
Labor Organization (ILO) statistics, 41 percent of children under age 14, approximately 80
million, are working(ILO). This number is virtual twice the Asian rate. Poverty appears to be
the major reason for child labor. As the poorest continent, Africa has a higher incidence of child
labor, which is further differentiated within the continent itself. Countries in which an
astronomically immense portion of children is working are, on average, poor countries. As Basu
(1999) states it, sending their children into the labor force is the familys last income earning
resort. As anon as income increases, the children are withdrawn from the labor force. When they
do earn money they have to probe for other options and they give up on inculcation and the
health of themselves because they require surviving.The history of child labor can be traced
back to the Industrial Revolution when very puerile children were coerced to work in coal mines,
factories, sweatshops, and even as domestic auxiliaries. Even today, as per UNICEF, a whopping
150 million children all over the globe are engaged in labor.(UNICEF). Then in some countries,
you have laws where women are gainsaid formal edification and they are brought up from an
early age to work in the house as a house woman. This act fuels child labor and thus adolescent

kasozi |4
girls start doing housework at such an early age. Compared with other continents, African
countries are more rural, and still dominated by household engenderment, not immensely
colossal land holdings cumulated with labor markets. All factors cause high child participation
rates. Most child labor in Africa takes place at home. Some labor might be deleterious while
other kinds of labor are either innocuous or develop skills. Furthermore, the health and the
alimental status of the individual child greatly affect to what degree the same labor is deleterious
or subsidiary. So rudimental to stop an act of child labor what you would require to do first
would first stop the act that transpires at home and brings it to the media so that the regimes can
stop it within its walls. Midst proverbial enterprises in semipublic spaces, children were
perpetually again observed as technicalities and bus conductors. It's additionally approximated
that proximate to 6 million children in Nigeria do not peregrinate to school. I understand that to
most children, peregrinating to school may not be as fascinating as engaging in certain jobs, in
Africa, peregrinating to school is obligatory as it prepares children for working in their countries.
As the poorest continent, Africa has higher incidences of child labor. Penuriousness is cited as
the leading cause of child labor in Africa, parents send their children to work because of
diminished income and they withdraw them as anon as income increases (Edmonds, 9). I do not
find this exculpation plausible because research has denoted that there subsist countries with
minuscule income rates but lower child labor involution rates. Most of these children are
working in the agricultural fields or farms in many components of Nigeria. They consequently
lack or ran short of time to peregrinate to school. This has contributed to immensely a colossal
number of children found uneducated hence ending up working in agricultural farms in order to
earn for themselves.

kasozi |5
Poverty is also not a worthy explanation to the high rates of child labor because most children
participating in child labor are not wage laborers but household laborers. Since Africa is a more
rural dominated continent, labor involves small land holdings, household production and a
combination of labor markets (Edmonds, 10). Children labor in all of these areas, research shows
that these children perform women tasks than tasks of men. This is because women work more in
the agricultural households of Africans as opposed to men; this issue then escalates to being an
issue of girls labor (Canagarajah& Helena, 23).In Ghana, the 2010 Amalgamated States
Department of Labor projected more preponderant than 2.7 million child laborers in Ghana, or
on the subject of 43% of every single child aged 514. Artisan mining, Agriculture, and fishing
were the principal employers. The children in Ghana that were prevalent in domestic
accommodations emanate from the places called Accra and Ashanti territories. The children in
the towns as adolescent as 6 are locally referred to as kayaye. These children work in urban areas
or centers and they are always optically discerned as porters. In the case of the southern part of
Volta district, kids work in spiritual servitudes for an interlude ranging flanked by some months
to more than 3 years. These children are branded as trokosi, which factually denotes spouse of a
deity, Vudu's or fiashidi this put into practice call for adolescent girls or female children to labor
and provide the religious sort, in order to be in concurrence for kin members supposed sins or as
a contribution for the family's good fortune (Togunde et al. 80). This perform are claimed to be
withal there in bordering. The effects of child labor often leave the children with earnest health
quandaries because of them working in perilous conditions. Most of the time the employees do
not care at all about the children who are malnourished and thirsty, and still perpetuate to work
for long hours without the break. Then you have their noetic health that takes a beating from the
exploitation they take every day.Each year, as many as 2.7 million salubrious years of life are

kasozi |6
disoriented due to child labor, especially in agriculture(continuelearning). These children face
noetic trauma and will not be themselves ever again. When the children do not attend school it
affects the countries magnification because the younger generation, not literate cannot get the
jobs to avail the country grow. One-quarter of economically active children suffer injuries or
illnesses while working, according to an International Labor Organization survey of 26
countries.(continuelearning). Then the children that work are always underpaid that lowers the
country's per capita income thus putting long-term economic development in peril.
In Kenya, there are additionally instances of child labor. It was estimated in the year 2001 that
there were approximately 3 million children working in hazardous conditions that exposed them
to life threatening conditions. The number of invisible children working in the same condition
were withal many. The overt child labor in Kenya are occupied in tourism industry, agriculture,
mines, quarries and pastoral labor, reluct amassment, fishing business,

mining, and the

conveyance segment where they shift from place to other. Most of the children in Kenya work in
the factories and agricultural fields. This gainsays them their right to schooling. In Kenya
additionally, coerced exploitation or sexual abuse in children is rampant in some towns in Kenya
that may include Nairobi, Kisumu , Eldoret and some major coastal cities like Mombasa. The
major causes of child labor in Kenya are scarcity and the short of edification. The country faces
shortages of schools, edifiers and excess numbers in schools, and bureaucratic complications
from childrens unregistered status. The Kenyan regulation enjoins right of ingress to schools to a
youngster if he or she is not registered as a denizen with Kenyan establishment (Buchmann
1360). In the current years, a good percentage of Kenyan children in rural areas stay behind not
registered. As a result, even though schools may subsist, rural children are not able to verify
citizenship, consequently, these unregistered children risk losing the chance for training. The

kasozi |7
above discussion has elaborated the instances that led to increment in child labor in Africa, ILO
(International labor organization) identifies that there is need to address this issue. It accentuates
on support and focus for the full implementation and development of action plans of nations in
Africa for the eradication of child labor (Strang & patricia, 45). The organizations conception is
to scale up and replicate pilot projects aimed at eradicating child labor and integrate the issue of
child labor into national progress agendas. It has withal launched a resource epicenter for Africa:
Clic-Africa which is an online platform that conventionally tracks all child issues in particular
African countries (Strang & Patricia, 60). They provide legislation concerning child issues but
licit enforcement is still challenging in some countries I feel African countries should commence
with posture transmutation in order to address this quandary; they should shift from colonial
mindsets and sanction children to peregrinate to school, this will additionally transmute the
posture of the world about Africa as a poor and analphabetic continent. More donors should
withal fixate on distributing funds to schools in order to ascertain that poor children get free
edification and victuals in schools, in my research I realized that poor African children in Kenya
only peregrinate to school because of the victuals that is provided in school during famine
(Edmonds, 80).
In conclusion consequently, many children in the African countries are subjected to child labor.
As exemplified in the case study of the three African countries, most of the children involved in
child labor are as a result of some factors that may in include the lack of inculcation and
penuriousness. Most of the children are coerced to go and work in the factories and in the
agricultural farms a well as in the quarries. Most of these children are employed and paid low
wages that will make them look for more money the following day. These children are exposed
to conditions that are inimical to their health. For instance, hose working in the quarries may be

kasozi |8
hit by stones. Those in the agricultural farms are exposed to chemicals that are utilized in the
farms. Many want to put a cessation to this socio-economic quandary but you would have to go
to the root of the quandary and it is the regime, impecuniosity, and edification. So when you
inculcate the poorer sections of the society and they thus become civilized they can then get jobs
and contribute to the magnification of the nation. People should optically canvass this act and ask
themselves would you ever want to do this or would you optate your children to be doing this act
to survive. These countries need to realize that education is important in assisting children to
become more adapted people in the society today. The society respects more those who are
learned and flowing with the global world. This paper has described the reasons that make Africa
have high child labor participation and the recommendations to alleviate this problem in the
society.

Works Cited

kasozi |9
Canagarajah, Sudharshan, and Helena Skyt Nielsen. "Child labor in Africa: A comparative study." The
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 575.1 (2001): 71-91.
Edmonds, Eric V. "Child labor and schooling responses to anticipated income in South Africa." Journal
of development Economics 81.2 (2006): 386-414.
Strang, David, and Patricia Mei Yin Chang. "The International Labor Organization and the welfare state:
institutional effects on national welfare spending, 196080." International Organization 47.02
(1993): 235-262.
Kale, Sailee. "Causes and Effects of Child Labor." Buzzle. Buzzle.com, n.d. Web. 13 June 2016.
"Health Issues." - The Child Labor Education Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 June 2016.
"ECLT - Causes and Consequences of Child Labour." ECLT - Causes and Consequences of
Child Labour. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 June 2016.
"Child Labour." UNICEF. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 June 2016.