Child Labor in Africa - Research Paper Example

Introduction The International Labor Organization defines child labor as all forms of work by children below the agelaid down in the standards of ILO. Generally, although it is subject to some exceptions this age is 15 years or the age at which a child completes compulsory schooling. It also classifies worst forms of child labor to include pornography, forced conscription of children for employment in armed conflict, debt bondage, slavery, prostitution, use of children in drug trafficking among other illegal activities, and any other work that may be perilous or harmful to the health, morals or safety of boys and girls below the age of 18 years. According to Andvig, child labor refers to labor carried out by believably too young children, which means that by so doing, they unduly decrease their current economic welfare or their income earning capabilities in future, either by decreasing their own individual productive capabilities in future or by contracting their future external choice sets (3). In Africa, children’s work is a generally accepted part of childhood. A household framework wherein children’s work is used to profit parents as well as the extended family network, to secure training and socialization opportunities as well as sustenance for its members is prevalent in Africa. Child labor, in the African context, is deemed as vocational education, especially where children work together with their parents in the rural setup. A long history of domestic and agricultural work by children in numerous parts of Africa exists (Bass, 20-22). Besides education, Africans view child labor in terms of instilling knowledge and responsibility of a way of life or of a trade. Particularly in the rural areas, child labor in Africa, rather than create a negative connection, presents itself historically as a method of useful training as well as social reproduction for children. Child labor is therefore a historically key part of childhood in African rural, subsistence agricultural areas. It also embodies a crucial part of overall production in the rural setups whereby parents bear many children because they can be profitable economically. Just like in the rural areas, children’s work in African urban areas is a natural extension of the indigenous educational system. While girls work in the domestic setting, boys work in the apprenticeship system. Parents usually foster their children to strangers, extended family members as well as religious leaders in urban areas. They do this with the intention of providing training opportunities for their children as well as future opportunities for other family members to migrate to urban areas. Moreover, if a child becomes established in the urban area, his/her whole family profits because he/she may help the others and they all send remittances back home. Fostering however exposes some children to situations that are potentially exploitative, especially if there is no parental supervision (Bass, 22-23). D'Andrea explains two types of child labor in Africa, the first one being trafficking of children. This involves the transportation, recruitment, receipt or transfer of a child for the purposes of labor, slavery, sexual exploitation or forced labor. The recruitment of these children is on untrue promises of employment and education and they are transported in risky conditions. Areas where trafficking is common include Burkina Faso, Benin, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Togo, Ghana, Nigeria, Mali and Niger. The other type of child labor is bonded child labor whereby a family receives payment in advance in order to hand over a child to an employer. The United Nations notes the fact that Africa, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa where children constitute almost one-half of the population, has the highest number of working children in the world as a proportion of the child population. The continent has roughly 80 million child workers and by the year 2015; this number could increase to 100 million. Citing statistics from International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations records that 41% of all African children between 5-14 years are engaged in some kind of economic activity, compared to 17% in Latin America and 21% in Asia. It further notes that the participation rate among African girls is the highest (37%) compared to Latin America (11%) and Asia (20%) (p14). One of the main causes of this problem is the continent's poverty. Research indicates that when there is increased rate of poverty in a populace, those families that are hit the hardest oblige all their members to contribute economically in order for them to raise their insufficient incomes and survive. In this case, children fall victim (Andvig, 1).With the exception of a short-lived improvement in the 1960s, the working and living conditions of most Africans have worsened since independence (Hindman, 169). According to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), child labor in developing countries, Africa being one of them, is a significant source of income for poor families, which explains the reason as to why eliminating or reducing /it is hard (13). A Child Labor Survey conducted in Zimbabwe in the year 1999 by the International Labor Organization revealed that roughly 88% of economically active children between the ages of 5 to17 were from households whose monthly incomes were less than 36 US dollars. With a rise in family incomes, the rate of participation fell to below 1%. On asking them why they made their children work, parents and guardians often responded that it was to assist in domestic enterprise or to supplement household income. The same case applies to Tanzania - children work directly either on farms or in informal sector activities. A study conducted by the International Labor Organization on Tanzania also attributed the increased incidence of child labor to school system deterioration, which has been brought about by economic decline. The introduction of school fees under the structural adjustment program of the country, poor infrastructure, as well as low teacher morale have been great contributing factors to higher truancy and drop-out rates. This has decreased the country’s primary enrolment rate (from 90% in 1980 to 77.8% in the year 1996). 30% of all children aged 10-14 years do not attend school and many end up in child labor. School drop-out rate in villages near mining sites is around 30% to 40% (United Nations, 14). In actual fact, the evolution of Africa’s child labor problem depends directly on two factors, external to the continent. The first factor is economic pressure – price fixing of raw materials on global markets as well as debt repayment mechanisms indicate that Africa is robbed a substantial part of her riches to rich countries’ advantage. This way, African states are forced to reduce spending on health and education, areas that have little short-term economic gain and that have the greatest impact on the lives of children. Secondly, child labor in Africa is directly dependent on cultural pressure. The 1989 adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child inflicted a ‘worldview’ of the child in Africa and, particularly, an abolitionist view on child labor, in a period wherein independence might have allowed Africans to revitalize their traditional conceptions of the relationship between adults and children, specifically, the place accorded within education to participation even by the youngest children to the economic activities of the community (Hindman, 169). The United Nations further explains that the effect of international pressure is mainly powerful in connection with child labor. In general, financial resources, action plans and policies are from abroad. With the application and adoption of International Labor Organization Convention 182 on worst child labor forms, since the year 1999, international pressure has been accountable for laying down new action priorities that, are likely to impact on only the fringes of the problem of child labor in Africa. Three quarters of working children in Africa are in rural environments. While some children work in commercial agriculture, others work with their families. Commercial agriculture, however, only accounts for employing less than ten percent of the total number of working children. Commercial agriculture mainly takes the form of specialist tea, coffee, flowers, cocoa, tobacco, sisal, sugar cane, rubber, and vanilla plantations, among others, depending on the country. It is important to note that since 1980s, due to pressure emanating from international markets, families are being forced to change their agricultural production from crops for local use to crops for export (commercial agriculture). This way, more children are subjected to being regulated by collection trucks’ schedules. Children working in these kinds of plantations face the risk of chemical exposure, mostly pesticides. In most cases, these children live in plantations together with their families and they have to work before and after school, which is not only very tiring but also hinders their development (Hindman, 170). In the same way, children workers within the family context also endure great hardships as a result of working conditions rather than economic exploitation – they have to walk long distances, especially in search for water, they are permanently exposed to weather vagaries and to attack by wild animals, reptiles and insects. They also use antiquated equipment to work with hard soil. Those whose job is looking after livestock endure moments of solitude. Child labor in Africa is also common in the urban areas. Children are employed in large industrial businesses either as children in small trades or as child servants where very young girls carry out domestic work. Children involved in small trades are used to offer various services in small mobile businesses that are mostly specialized and flexible enough to respond quickly to the demands of customers. Sometimes, the activities of these children workers are not far removed from begging (Hindman, 170). Andvig points out the fact that in Africa, children of both sexes perform more of women’s as opposed men’s duties. Compared to children elsewhere, they tend to do a greater share of the job in African homesteads since African women take on a larger share of the economic tasks in agriculture. A number of recent anthropological studies have proved this, with one of the extreme cases in Zimbabwe revealing that, during the season of farming, while the men worked for three hours and thirty-two minutes, women worked for eight hours and twenty-seven minutes daily. As they grow older, children tend to do more of the jobs that adults of the same sex do. Seeing that women carry out a greater share of the time-consuming jobs, the question of child labor becomes an issue of the girls’ labor to a great extent (2). AIDS is another major contributing child labor factor in many countries in Africa. The rate of HIV/AIDS infection has been on the rise and it has killed numerous breadwinners thereby driving more families into deeper poverty and placing a greater burden on the survivors. Recently, the demand for children workers has been on the rise to replace HIV/AIDS infected adults – children orphaned by the pandemic are left with no choice but to seek employment in order to survive. When a general manager by the name Mr. Norman Kelly of the Tanzanian Brooke Bond plantation was questioned about child labor on tea estates in Tanzania, he answered that the adult labor force is diminishing fast due to the high rate of HIV/AIDS among scores of workers. Another example of the high rate of HIV/AIDS is in the Democratic Republic of Congo where many women were raped during the wars, thereby contracting HIV/AIDS. Some of them gave birth to sick children (Theophile, 4). Another study of children with Aids in six countries in Southern and Eastern Africa by UNICEF revealed that the when families face dissolution as a result of HIV/AIDS the likelihood of children being subjected into exploitative labor increases. While children should be in school, the burdensome new responsibility they acquire of breadwinner compels them to drop out from school (United Nations, 14). Some of the orphaned children become sex workers and especially in coastal towns where sex tourism is common, child prostitution is prevalent. Numerous African children have as such contracted HIV/AIDS too (Hindman, 170). The other factor influencing child labor is high birth rate. Micro-oriented studies of single communities document that older children, mainly girls, do a greater share of toddler and infant childcare. In a study that a researcher by the name Reynolds carried out in her village, she observed that girls aged between 4 to 8 years spent 56% of their waking hours caring for small children and infants as compared to women who spent 20% of their time doing the same (Andvig, 2). Child labor has given rise to numerous problems in Africa. To start with, the children receive little or no pay for their hard work and long working hours. They also suffer long term effects on the same – the fact that they drop out from school means that they grow up illiterate and they can therefore not get a good job, making them live a life of poverty. Mostly, they are also left with long term emotional and physical scars. Child labor therefore hampers the development of the continent as a whole (Theophile, 5). Conclusion Apparently, the problem of child labor is alarming in Africa. As discussed in this paper, the major contributing factors to this problem include poverty, lack of free/affordable education, HIV/AIDS, high birth-rates among others. As ANPPCAN indicates, there is dire need to combat this problem and this can be done through employing such strategies as offering direct support services to families and children who are at risk of getting into child labor, rescuing children who are already engaged in work, carrying out research; team building through intersectoral linkages; raising awareness; advocacy on policy; as well as capacity building (2). Child welfare experts, rights activists, local government authorities, as well as community leaders also need to start providing education to parents and other members of the African society regarding the dangers of child labor. Works Cited Andvig, Jens. Issues in Child Labor in Africa. 2001. Web. ANPPCAN. Supporting activities to protect children from Child Labor throughout Kenya. 2008. Web. Bass, Loretta E. Child labor in sub-Saharan Africa. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 2004. Print. Child Labor Public Education Project. Causes of Child Labor. N.d. Web. D'Andrea, Donna. Child Labor in Africa. 2007. Web. Hindman, Hugh D. The world of child labor: an historical and regional survey. New York: M.E. Sharpe. 2009. Print. International Labor Organization. Child Labor in Africa. 2005. Web. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Combating Child (OECD). Labor: A Review of Policies. United States: OECD Publishing, 2003. Print. Theophile, Mugisho N. The Dishonour of Child Labor in Africa. 2011. Web. United Nations. “Protecting Africa's Children: The Road from Soldier Back to Child.” Africa Recovery 15 (2001): 14. Print. Read More