By Charles S. Amponsah
Tackling child and forced labour in Ghana’s cocoa communities requires more than awareness; it demands empowering women and creating alternative sources of income for families, says the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI).
According to the 2024 Global Estimates of Child Labour, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to carry the heaviest burden, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all children in child labour – around 87 million. While prevalence fell from 24 to 22 per cent, the total number has remained stagnant against the backdrop of population growth, ongoing and emerging conflicts, extreme poverty, and stretched social protection systems.
This global reality mirrors the situation in cocoa-growing regions, where families often rely on their children to perform hazardous farm tasks, exposing them to physical and developmental harm.
Communications Director of ICI, Katie Bird, told journalists in Kumasi that financial pressure is a major driver of child labour, and reducing household dependence on children for farm work must begin with strengthening family incomes.
“There’s a lot of other things as well around improving household income—so helping cocoa farming families develop alternative income generating activities that could supplement the income of the family but also make it less reliant on cocoa,” she explained.
She acknowledged that many farmers rely on their children not because they want to, but because of limited options. “Obviously there’s many reasons why a farmer might rely on their children to do hazardous tasks on the farm. One area might be that they don’t necessarily understand the risks… another really big important point is access to quality education,” she noted.
To close this gap, she stressed the need for empowering women in cocoa-growing communities. “Empowering women in cocoa-growing communities, either with alternative income generating activities or giving more decision-making power within that household, can have an important impact,” she said.
According to her, these interventions not only ease financial stress but also free children to stay in school, reducing their exposure to hazardous tasks such as carrying heavy loads or handling pesticides.
ICI’s work, she added, goes beyond awareness creation. It involves supporting farming families with skills, building stronger educational systems, and ensuring communities understand what constitutes child labour under Ghana’s hazardous activity framework.
Katie Bird pointed out that such holistic approaches, when combined with accountability from governments, industry, and communities, provide a sustainable path to protecting children and strengthening cocoa-growing households.
