Child labour (Ivory Coast, Ghana)
Chocolate production is a multi-billion-dollar global industry, heavily dependent on cocoa beans primarily sourced from West Africa, particularly Ivory Coast and Ghana. Together, these countries supply approximately two-thirds of the world's cocoa, making them crucial to global chocolate supply chains. While chocolate consumption remains highest in Europe and North America, the dynamics of global trade position West African farmers at the very bottom of an extensive, complex economic hierarchy.
Despite the industry's profitability, cocoa farmers earn minimal incomes, often insufficient to meet basic needs. Fluctuating global cocoa prices, driven by market speculation, climate variability, and corporate practices, create economic instability that directly affects local communities. Farmers bear the brunt of market volatility, unable to secure fair or predictable prices for their harvests.
Global chocolate companies, including major multinational corporations, dominate this trade through intricate supply chains designed to minimize costs. They source cocoa through multiple intermediaries, distancing themselves from the direct realities of farming communities. Such structures obscure accountability, complicating efforts to eliminate exploitative practices, including child labour. Consequently, the pressures of global capitalism reinforce conditions of poverty, perpetuating cycles of vulnerability among farming families and contributing directly to widespread reliance on child labour.
Key Facts: Ivory Coast
• Capital: Yamoussoukro• Largest city: Abidjan (5.6 million, urban area)
• Population: 31.5 million (2024 estimate)
• GDP per capita: ~$7K per capita (ppp)
• Independence: 1960 (from France)
Regional Focus: Ivory Coast and Ghana
Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producer, accounting for around 40% of global supply. Cocoa farming dominates its economy, involving over one million smallholder farmers who typically cultivate small plots of land. Despite its central role in global chocolate markets, rural cocoa-growing regions remain economically marginalized, characterized by poor infrastructure, limited access to education and healthcare, and chronic poverty. These conditions push families into reliance on child labour as an economic necessity, exacerbated by persistent political instability and limited governmental capacity to address labour rights abuses.
Ghana, the world's second-largest cocoa exporter, contributes approximately 20% of global production. Cocoa farming employs over 800,000 families, mostly operating on small, family-owned farms. Although Ghana has historically provided somewhat better government oversight compared to Ivory Coast, poverty and limited opportunities persist, particularly in rural areas. Price fluctuations and insufficient returns to farmers sustain economic precarity. Despite government and international efforts at regulation and child labour eradication, economic pressures continue to drive families into using children in cocoa cultivation, maintaining cycles of poverty and unfree labour conditions.
Cocoa Farming Communities
Cocoa farming communities in Ivory Coast and Ghana face profound economic hardships rooted in systemic poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and limited access to essential services. Farmers typically cultivate small plots, averaging between two and five hectares, which yield insufficient income to sustain their households year-round. Low and unpredictable cocoa prices exacerbate financial insecurity, compelling families into debt cycles that perpetuate their vulnerability and dependence on informal loans from local middlemen and brokers.
Socially, these communities often lack basic infrastructure, including schools, healthcare facilities, clean water, and electricity. Educational resources, when available, are frequently underfunded and distant, discouraging regular attendance by children. Poor health services heighten community vulnerability, as untreated illnesses and injuries significantly affect productivity and family stability. Moreover, the absence of adequate transportation networks isolates communities, limiting farmers' bargaining power and market access, while reinforcing their reliance on exploitative intermediaries. Collectively, these conditions create environments where child labour emerges as both a survival strategy and an economic necessity.
Child Trafficking
Child labour in cocoa farming emerges through diverse recruitment pathways, including trafficking and voluntary labour migration driven by economic desperation. In Ivory Coast, trafficking networks systematically target impoverished rural communities across the broader West African region, particularly Burkina Faso, Mali, and Togo. Children, often deceived with promises of education, wages, or better living conditions, are transported covertly to remote cocoa plantations, where they face coercive labour conditions with minimal or no remuneration. These practices exploit familial vulnerability, economic desperation, and limited state oversight, perpetuating cycles of unfree labour and exploitation.
In Ghana, while trafficking exists, child labour often arises from internal migration and familial arrangements shaped by poverty. Families facing economic hardship frequently send their children to relatives or acquaintances in cocoa-producing areas, hoping to secure better livelihoods or educational opportunities. However, many of these arrangements result in exploitative conditions, where children's labour far exceeds acceptable norms, and their access to education becomes severely restricted or non-existent. Thus, both voluntary and coercive migration pathways intertwine, reinforcing systemic child labour practices deeply embedded within regional economic and social contexts.
Daily Realities
Children engaged in cocoa farming face hazardous working conditions characterized by strenuous physical labour, dangerous tools, and prolonged exposure to harmful environments. Daily tasks involve clearing land, planting seedlings, applying pesticides without protective gear, and using sharp machetes to harvest and split cocoa pods. The absence of adequate safety equipment significantly increases risks of severe injuries, including deep cuts, fractures, and chemical poisoning, resulting in long-term health consequences.
Moreover, children regularly endure excessive work hours, often exceeding twelve hours per day, with limited rest and inadequate nutrition. They frequently carry heavy loads, causing chronic musculoskeletal disorders and stunted physical development. Education is severely disrupted or entirely inaccessible, restricting their future opportunities and perpetuating intergenerational poverty. These daily realities reflect systemic neglect and the normalization of exploitative conditions, embedding child labour as an integral component of cocoa production's socioeconomic landscape.
Family Strategies and Survival Economies
Families in cocoa-producing regions adopt diverse strategies to cope with persistent poverty and economic insecurity, many of which inadvertently perpetuate child labour. Child labour emerges not merely from coercion but also as a calculated family response to economic vulnerability. Parents strategically deploy children's labour within farming and household tasks, viewing it as essential to family survival rather than exploitation. Children's earnings, although minimal, are critical in supplementing household income and ensuring basic needs are met, particularly during periods of economic stress or poor harvests.
Survival economies in cocoa-growing communities are often characterized by informal, unstable, and opportunistic livelihoods. Families diversify their income sources through petty trading, wage labour, and debt arrangements with brokers, frequently relying on children's labour contributions. Within these economic frameworks, children's education and personal development become secondary to immediate household survival, embedding child labour into familial and community economic strategies.
In Conclusion: Global Chocolate Corporations
Global chocolate corporations wield significant influence over cocoa production through complex supply chains designed to maximize profits while minimizing direct responsibility for labour conditions. Major chocolate brands source cocoa indirectly through multiple layers of suppliers, brokers, and cooperatives, distancing themselves from on-the-ground practices and obscuring accountability. Although many companies publicly commit to ethical sourcing practices, including certification programs such as Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, and UTZ, actual implementation remains inconsistent, frequently criticized for limited transparency and effectiveness.
Suppliers and intermediaries, pressured to deliver cocoa at competitive prices, often overlook or indirectly perpetuate child labour to meet market demands. Economic pressures cascade downward through the supply chain, reinforcing exploitative practices among farmers and their families. Without rigorous oversight, transparency, and sustained corporate commitment, these extensive chains serve to normalize child labour and exploitation, undermining meaningful efforts toward ethical production. Effective change thus demands greater corporate accountability, improved traceability, and genuine investment in cocoa-growing communities.
Some Questions to Think About
How might our understanding of childhood change if viewed through the lens of necessity and survival rather than idealized norms of education and play?
Given the complex role child labor often plays in family survival strategies, how might communities that rely on it perceive the practice differently from external observers (e.g., policymakers, activists, or researchers)? Conversely, how might those who have never experienced long-term survival-based hardship struggle to fully understand these perspectives?
Last updated: Spring 2025