Normally however, child labour in the pre-colonial Africa was largely a form of schooling and vocational education; in absence of the colonial western styled education. Accordingly, it is stated elsewhere that these informal institutions provided opportunities for children to learn the arts and skills from their parents, and as adults, they continued to work in the same hereditary occupation.¹ Since there were no formal schools in pre-colonial Africa, children were informally schooled by working with their family and kin from a very early age. This explains why in the pre-colonial African society child labour was seen as a way of instilling a sense of responsibility and a way of life in children particularly in rural, subsistence agricultural communities.²

In Europe, industrialization created the prerequisite for employment of children for various industrial works. Child labour was employed in varying extents through most of the period, especially in factories; some worked night shifts lasting 12 hours.³The establishment of colonies was meant to secure raw-materials for industrial production, hence huge labour requisition in the colonies. Between 1650 and 1950, the colonial administration encouraged the hiring of an entire household, including children for work, in agricultural farms, mines and domestic service industries.⁴This was so especially in African colonies with plantation agriculture such as Kenya, Tanzania, etc.

In other non plantation colonies like Nigeria, the British colonial agricultural policy of cash crops production induced child labour for such crops as groundnuts, beniseed, soya bean, cotton wool, palm oil and cocoa. The policy was so carefully articulated that parts of the country had to specialise in the production of crops that suit their environment. For instance, eastern Nigeria specialised in the production of palm products, western Nigeria in cocoa and rubber and northern Nigeria in cotton and oil seeds. Taxation was a critical policy to generate revenue for running the administration and to stimulate farmers to produce the much desired output of the exports. The strategy was that taxes had to be paid the in the colonial currency, which means farmers would have to have much of it, to pay taxes and cover the cost of personal needs. The option therefore was for farmers to increase the production of the colonial exports. One of the taxes, which Britain and France introduced in their colonies, as identified by Jane Guyer, was the Head Tax, imposed on everyone older than 8 years old.⁵

Since this strategy for increased export production was not matched with improved technology, the only avenue for African farmers to step up production was by expanding the size of farmland, increasing the hours spent working each day and involving more children in farm activities. While children spent several hours working under the scorching sun, a greater number was engaged in the homes, doing clean-up of the crops, for example, picking cotton seeds, drying groundnuts and cocoa to obtain a fine quality for export.

The first efforts made by the British government through the Factory Act in the 19^th century, amended in 1856 and 1901were meant to curtail the menace of child labour at home. Today, there are both international and domestic laws of world countries, which prohibit child labour.

With regard to the causes of child labour, the paper sees poverty and absence of school as the primary causes, and therefore recommends positive leadership; one to reduce poverty, provide affordable education and health care system.

CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS AND ISSUES

A child is regarded as a person of extreme young age, who is considered socially vulnerable, given his/her relatively low developed physical and mental strength. This definition is apt in view of the numerous challenges of society. Perhaps, this is why Durojaiye in his study of the Psychology of human development concluded that the critical stage in a child’s development is the adolescence stage, whose age limits he sets at between 12 and 15 years old.⁶ According to him, adolescence children have a tense emotional feeling that is enduring, and which tends to have overwhelming influence on their future lives. ⁷

Article 1 of the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child,1989 defines children as persons under the age of 18 years, unless the laws of a particular country set the legal age for adulthood as younger than 18 years.⁸ Indeed, some organisations such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) have adopted other working terms like adolescent, between the ages of 10 and 19 years; youth, between the ages of 15 and 24 years and young person, between the ages of 10 and 24 years, for purpose of carrying specific assignments, which of course must not defy the UNO convention on children’s rights. Children’s rights according to the UNO cover a broad spectrum of children related issues, which can be broken down into right to survival; to development of their full physical and mental potential, right to protection from influences that are harmful to their development, and the right to participation in family, cultural and social life. Member nations are expected to protect these rights of their children by providing healthcare, education, legal and social services.

Ordinarily, the mention of child labour would not signal situation of abuse, but instead work that is done by children. It is the exploitative and depravity aspects of the labour, which is abuse that constitutes child labour. Article 3 of the International Labour Organisation Convention No. 182 defines child labour as “works that deprive children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that are harmful to physical and mental development”.⁹ It further identifies these works as involving practices similar to slavery such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced labour, for instance, recruitment for armed conflict. The ILO cannot be advocating for child idleness or indolence, and therefore, there is every need to analyse this definition, to clarify some doubts that may as a result of this definition. For convenience of easy understanding, children of work age can be classified into two: the younger children, up to the ages of 9 years and the older ones, from the age of 10 to 17 years.

Therefore, in some circumstances, for example, environmental and cultural circumstances, child labour may depend on the nature of the work, in relation to the child’s age, the purpose for which the work is done, the amount of time spent on the work and the implication of the work on the child’s holistic development. A 12-year child doing works to help in the family upkeep, such as washing his father’s car, helping her mother in the kitchen or a 6-year child sweeping the room, washing plates would not be termed a child labourer. This same opinion is expressed by Rachel Billington that:

Work cannot be universally a bad thing for children, especially if children work to prepare themselves for productive adult lives; one that increase their knowledge of the skills they will one day need in order to survive, and to gain status as useful members of the community. This work, for them, has an educative, rather than exploitative dimension.¹⁰

The complication inherent in the definition of child labour justifies the much time being spent in the analysis. For instance, work that may not be regarded as child labour for children of ages between 10 and 17 years may be it, if done by children from the ages of 9 years below. Additionally, even for children between 10 to 17 years, the number of hours spent on a work regardless of the purpose, determines whether it is child labour or not. So, children helping their families doing household work, if spans over several hours of the day, is tantamount to slavery and could be tagged child labour.

It is the feeling of this paper that what the UNO Convention on the Rights of Children expresses is a desire to create consciousness in society, towards the protection of children from danger and exploitation. Outside this, setting the maximum age of children at 17 years, especially with regard to protection is defective of service to humanity, since persons of between 18 and of 20 years are still very young and are equally a vulnerable social group. Therefore, positive self judgement of an employer of labour, to remove work-related abuses is consequential in achieving the desire of the UNO.

INCIDENCES OF CHILD LABOUR IN AFRICA

Although, the preponderance rate of child labour is generally high in developing countries than in the developed ones, African countries particularly exhibit exceedingly alarming incidences. For instance, in 2010, records show that sub-Saharan Africa had the highest incidence rates of child labour with several African nations witnessing over 50 percent of children aged 5–14 working.¹¹The situation may be caused not by a single factor; however, the two most glaring are poverty and absence of school.

Earlier in 1998, the international labour organization (ILO) estimated that 24.6 percent of children between the ages 10-14 in Nigeria were working. The report of the Child Welfare League indicates:

In Lagos alone there are 100,000 boys and girls living and working on the streets. In northern Nigeria, children, known as the almajiraiare a times employed in private farms and in commercial farms. Some of the children are even trafficked and used as farm labourers.¹²

The above report is complemented by the estimates of the National Child Labour Survey, which show that there are 15 million children engaged in child labour in Nigeria.¹³These children are either engaged in farms with their parents or in homes. Other avenues where child labour manifests in Nigeria includes early marriages, quarrying, mining, carriage of goods in parks and markets (wheelbarrow pushing), commercial motorcycling, etc. Ajah is of the opinion that in most Nigerian cities, and as well, in rural villages today, children of school age, are engaged in food trading on the streets, herding animals, tanning and drying raw leather products, fetching water for commercial purposes, washing dishes at restaurants, serving as domestic hands, selling wares at kiosks, collecting firewood for business, harvesting crops in family farms or commercial plantations, amongst other activities.¹⁴

The author’s survey in Nigeria in 2014 buttresses the foregoing analysis. According to the survey report, there was high level participation of children of school age in sale of pure water (sachet water), groundnuts, cowpea nuts, etc, particularly in urban centres. Such children were not attending school, and carried out the business on the permission of their parents.¹⁵

The reason for children engaging in these activities is explained in terms of support of their families or due to greed for money, at a tender age, for personal spending. This development of lust for wealth founds explanation under the colonial political economy of Africa and it has remained the bane of social disharmony today. Even poverty that is seen as a major factor driving children to labour has a colonial link. It is lack of money to attain modern standard of living as defined by western capitalism, which include housing, schooling, health and clothing.

The report of the ILO reveals that Rwanda has 400,000 child workers, out of which 120,000 are said to be involved in the worst forms of child labour and 60,000 in domestic works.¹⁶ According to the Rwandan Ministry of Public Service and Labour, 40% of the children engaged in labour had lost both of their parents, 94% lived in extreme poverty and 41% had never been to school. While in Tanzania, some 4,600 children of about 8 years are estimated to be working in small-scale mining, under harsh conditions,

In Kenya, it is reported that about 1.9 million children, between the ages of 5-17, are working children, without formal education.¹⁷ According to Suda, there are quite a greater number of invisible children labourers in Kenya than the 3 million visible ones who work under intolerable conditions; in agriculture, tourism industry, quarries, garbage collection and mines.¹⁸

The government of Zambia estimates that of the 595,000 child workers in the country 58% are aged 14 or less. Many are employed in informal mining operations. Agriculture is the dominant employer, and with mining employs 98% of all child labour in Zambia. The child labourers who mine lead, zinc, copper ore, emeralds, amethyst, aquamarines, tourmalines and garnets do not wear any protective equipment to protect their eyes or face or body, and so, are exposed to injuries.¹⁹ The informal sectors witnessing the worst form of child labour include cotton plantations, tobacco, fishing, tea and coffee, charcoal and in the small arts work

An International Programme for Eradicating Child Labour (IPEC) survey of children working in small scale mines in Madagascar showed that more than 58% were aged 12 or under. Of this percentage, only a third had opportunities to learn skills and half came from families that were in a precarious economic situation with difficult living conditions.²⁰ While the United States report of 2010 report indicates that 1.2 million Madagascar children aged 5–14 are workers, a French based group suggests that Madagascar child labour exceeds 2.4 million, with over 540,000 children aged 5–9 working. Agriculture alone accounts for about 87% of the child labourers, who work mainly in the production of vanilla, tea, cotton, cocoa, copra, sisal, shrimp harvest and fishing. The remaining children labourers, about 13% in domestic service work an average of 12 hours per day.²¹

With regard to Congo, records indicate that 4.7 children of aged 5-14 work in the copper and cobalt supplies to Chinese firms were mined by children. The children dig the ore by hand; carry sacks of ores on their backs, and these are then purchased by these companies. Over 60 of Katanga's 75 processing plants are owned by Chinese companies and 90 percent of the region's minerals go to China.²² An African NGO report claimed 80,000 child labourers under the age of 15, or about 40% of all miners, were supplying ore to Chinese companies in this African region.²³ Apart from working to ensure regular supplies to Chinese firms, children with their families participate in artisanal mining of cobalt, wolframite, cassiterite, columbite-tantalite, gold, diamonds. Many of these use hammers to break free the ore, pour harsh chemicals with no protective equipment, and manually transport rocks from deep pit or open pit mines. Children also work in agriculture and continue to be recruited as child soldiers for Congolese National Army and various rebel groups. Child labour is commonly visible on the streets of Kinshasa region.²⁴

In Ghana, agriculture, fishing and artisan mining have been identified as the largest employers of the over 2.7 million child labourers aged 5–14.²⁵ Children in Accra and Ashanti regions were common in domestic services. Unlike in urban centres of Ghana where child labourers work as porters (kayaye) as young as 6 years, in southern Volta region, children work in religious servitude, as wives of gods (trokosi, fiashidi , or vudusi), for a period ranging between few months to three years. This practice requires young girls to work and serve the religious order, in order to atone for family members’ alleged sins or as an offering for the family's good fortune. ²⁶ In 2013, statistics on children's work have not changed much as findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labour in Ghana; hazardous activities like pesticide spraying in the production of cocoa, fishing and gold mining have revealed.²⁷

Though the phenomenon of child labour transcends any African region, research conducted in 1993 indicates that sub-Saharan Africa had the highest child labour participation rate, and the major reason is poverty. The incidence of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing faster than the population. This is illustrated on Figure 1, which relates Child Labour Participation rate and GDP (US$).

Like it is pointed out earlier in this work, child labour manifests fundamentally in rural areas of Africa, especially agriculture where crude methods are applied, and in the home. Available evidence tend to suggest that agriculture is the largest employer of child labour in Africa, as vast majority of child labour is found in rural settings and informal urban economy, where children are predominantly employed by their parents, rather than factories.²⁸Unlike in African countries with plantation farms that engage children almost throughout the year, children labour in the countries without plantation farm is seasonal; heightening during rainy seasons and being less severe during the dry season. In either cases, when children are fully engaged in farms whether by their parents or for commercial services in the plantations, it is at the cost of their education.

CAUSES OF CHILD LABOUR IN AFRICA

No single factor explains the cause of child labour in Africa; rather there is a combination of causes, which include some of the following:

1. High prevalence rate of Poverty

Poverty is considered as the primary cause of child labour in Africa.²⁹ This is to say that children are engaged in activities, which both international and domestic laws of African countries prohibit because of the need to argument family efforts in providing their needs. Poverty, which may be caused by increased population growth, high rates of unemployment, disease, inflation and low wage rate has created the necessary conditions for children to engage in labour prescribed by law as child labour.³⁰

Poverty in Africa is predominantly rural, as more than 70 per cent of the continent’s poor people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for food and livelihood.³¹ Yet, attention of African governments to agriculture is decreasing tremendously. Records indicate that of the 218 million Africans who live in extreme poverty, in rural areas, a greater proportion are in the rural areas of Eastern and Southern Africa, which also is known to be among the areas with the highest concentrations of poor people in the world.³²

It has to be restated emphatically here that rural poverty in many areas of Africa has its roots in the colonial system and the policy and institutional restraints that it imposed on poor people. Though emerging post-colonial African leaderships showed great enthusiasm to providing the infrastructure for development, in recent past, such spirit seemed to be dashed. Thus the African rural setting is markedly one of continuing stagnation, poor production, low incomes and the rising vulnerability of poor people due to lack of access to markets, education, clean water, enough and safe food, electricity, health care and housing. Indeed, governments’ policies and investments in poverty reduction tend to favour urban over rural areas.

2. Impact of capitalist values

Of all the impact that capitalism has had on Africa, which distorts indigenous values is the monetization and commercialization of the hitherto pre-capitalist African economies. This has created an insatiable urge for wealth acquisition, hence the search for money. Thus, poverty alone would not adequately explain the phenomenon of child labour in Africa. The point therefore is that children of parents that are not absolutely poor; who do not lack the basic means of livelihood, do works of above their ages simply as a way of helping the family attain the luxuries it sets to acquire.

3. Absence of Parents

This factor of absence of parent is tied to the effects of death of parents on children. Children who have lost their parents, especially in death struggle to survive. Consequently, they are thrown into commercial works meant for adults, without any option of negotiating their remunerations and in further time, seeking improvement in the quality of work and condition of service. In Africa, one of the greatest causes of death, as records have shown has been the Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and recently, the Ebola virus. Many of the parentless children, have lost their parents principally through AIDS

Sub-Saharan Africa has continued to bear the greatest burden of HIV/AIDS epidemic, with approximately 63% of the total population living with HIV, 65% of the 4.3 million of total new infections and 72% of the 2.9 million in 2006. In 2009, records revealed that Nigeria alone documented 192,000 deaths from the epidemic every year which translate to 533 persons every day or 16,000Monthly.³³ No doubt, HIV/AIDS is changing the profile of rural poverty in Africa as it puts an unbearable strain on poor rural households, where labour is the primary income-earning asset.

4. Impact of African Culture

The training for social responsibility as defined during the pre-colonial times, and which accounted for the involvement of children in farm and home labour continues to hold sway in the 21^st century Africa. The traditional belief that a child who acquires western education without an inbuilt of the traditional values is not wholly trained, explains why children are today engaged in farms with their parents and in the homes offering services. Most often, especially during rainy seasons, children are drafted to farms for labour, by their parents. Usually, the cost of such acts on the children is the loss of their school days to farm labour. Giving the present world order, what is regarded as education is the western style. Consequently, educating the African child in the traditional sense, by deprivation of western education goes parallel to the UN laws on child right. Be it so, African way of life in most cases, is seen as abuse of modern norms, hence the issue of African culture and child labour.

5. High Birth Rate

Unguided birth has been identified as one of the causes of child labour in Africa. This factor has its roots from the African culture which encouraged polygamous marriage as a means of enhancing one’s social status. To fend for the so many children required that they (children) are utilised in farm for increase means of sustenance and for home keeping. The policy of raising plenty children without recourse to the means of providing their needs: education, food, clothing, health care continues in the 21^st century. It thus prompts many parents to offer their children for becomes sexually abused.

6. Bad Governance

Bad Governance is seen as a major cause of child labour in Africa because it translates in failure of the system to ameliorate the other causes of child labour such as poverty, disease, etc. While some African leaders have attempted putting in place institutions to create wealth, for the reduction of poverty, others who claim to owe their citizens no responsibility to good governance have remained adamant. Pundits have identified corruption as a major problem to poverty reduction in Africa. According to them, corruption mars efforts of poverty reduction institutions, as money meant for the purpose enters private pockets.

IMPLICATIONS OF CHILD LABOUR FOR AFRICA

The implications of child labour for the African child, the Economy and Society cannot be overstated:

1. Mental Implication

This is an obvious implication for the African child workers is mental derailment. They begin to look at themselves as socially inferior, without hope of rising above what they are, to be accorded the respect that others have in society. When they compare themselves with the children of wealthy parents, the psychological impact become even more severely negative: they attempt to disrespect their poor parents, blame their situation on the failure of their parents to struggle hard like the wealthy parents of their counterparts. Once this lack of cohesion begins at family level, it degenerates into the problem of lack of submission to national authority, and hence the problem of national cohesion.

2. Social Implication

Once these kinds of inferiority complexes as mentioned above are developed beyond childhood; to adulthood, disaster befalls the society in which they live. Apart from unleashing all forms of evils on society, they become awaiting instruments for individuals and groups intending to perpetrate atrocities on humanity and thereby causing social insecurity.

3. Health Implication

Child labour exposes the African child worker to several health hazards. Mention has already been made of the conditions of children for instance, in Ghana, Congo, Madagascar and Zambia mining and quarrying copper, gold, diamond, lead, zinc, bauxite and other precious stones with hammers and dangerous chemicals. They carry out these extractions without protecting their bodies and thus, are constantly sustaining injuries.³⁴

Many rural children who are pushed into commercial labour to argument family efforts have migrated to the urban centres. Generally, as children have left their parents, they become engaged in several unhealthy acts like drug abuse, commercial sex, etc. The girl-child commercial sex workers are exposed to contracting Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) such as HIV/AIDS. Indeed, HIV/AIDS remains a potential cause of death for the African child worker, irrespective of girl or boy.

4. Economic Implication

It is an undisputable fact that the health of every nation is her wealth.

People infected with HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases have lost the capacity to contribute to the growth of society. When the population of such people in a country become increasingly alarming, the consequence on the economy can better be imagined than explained. Equally children who grew up into adulthood as truants; engaging in drug abuse, executing conflicts are no longer an asset to their country; they are a liability instead. The impact on the economy is a decrease in the national productivity ratio, which negatively affects the Gross National Product (GNP) of the country, hence economic development is retarded.

CURBING CHILD LABOUR IN AFRICA: SOME PANACEA

African governments have been in league with other world countries in attempt to curb the menace of child labour through the application of the ILO and local country laws. Yet, the phenomenon continues to increase in rates and dimensions, and as such the paper suggests some panacea for curbing the situation

1. The public should be made to be adequately informed of the dangers that await them if they surrender and subject their children to exploitative labour, especially the forms that damage the future of children. May African parents are not aware of the international and local laws prohibiting child labour and act in ignorance, though in consonance with local cultural values. Thus, sensitisation advocacy will properly equip parents with the evils of child labour, the stand of governments and the punishment that waits them, should they pay deaf ears. Perhaps, the understated quotation may help in understanding the basis for this paper’s suggestion:

Most countries in Africa prohibited the employment of children in economic activities, especially the worst form of child labour. This was due to its bad consequences of the children in their present and future time. However, most of law enforcement failed to curb child labour.³⁵

For instance, the government of Zambia has strict laws against trafficking and child labour, however, implementation and enforcement the laws has proven to be difficult.

2. Revamping Education can go unimaginable extent in erasing the problem of child labour in Africa. Many African countries have put in place programmes to achieve the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which include education, health and poverty. On the contrary however, governments educational systems remains paper work, as the schools are not functional. The result of this failure is the proliferation of private schools, whose major motive is to make profit, pure and simple. Thus, it is recommended that African governments institute compulsory free education, at least at the levels of primary and secondary, improve structural facilities and teachers’ enumerations. Parents who had hitherto been unable to send their children to school can do it. It has to be emphasised that such education for economic development of Africa must be functional education.

3. To achieve elimination of child labour in Africa, the palliatives must be systematically applied. Therefore, putting in place a functional educational system to absorb the African children requires money. The money can be generated through several means, including blocking income leakages through practical approaches of arresting and detaining of money launders, and retrieval of the stolen money. Indeed, corruption has been the bane of social and economic development in Africa, and it has to be stopped.

4. One of the causes of poverty, which results to child labour, is poverty. Therefore, to eradicate poverty is to eradicate child labour, and one way of eradicating poverty is employment. Unemployment has become a disease plaguing the African society, with its high rates evidenced in every country. For instance, the report of the National Bureau of Statistics puts the rate of unemployment in Nigeria as running to around 19.7%, and almost half of 15-24 years old living in urban areas are jobless, 49% of the unemployed reside in the urban region and 39.7% live in rural region.³⁶

5. Regulating birth rate, to reduce the size of family is equally a possible approach towards curbing child labour in Africa. According to the report of the United Nations in 2007, of 15 world countries with the highest fertility rate, 14 are in Africa. This means that the size of families in Africa is highest, when compared to other continents of the world, and it entails greater responsibility for the parents, as it relates to the total cost of living. This becomes a potential reason for child labour, as the elderly children are forced to work to support the family, instead of attending school.

CONCLUSION:

This paper examines child labour in Africa, in terms of the causes and the way forward. It holds that the inherent contradiction in the conceptual explanation of child labour by the United Nations may well have been the reason that efforts at eradicating the phenomenon have remained paper work. The UN has admitted that it cannot be advocating for children indolence, thereby contradicting some of the children works that it considers as child labour. By and large, what constitutes child labour should related to the method through which a child is brought to labour, the age of the child in relation to the labour, the purpose of that labour and the time spent on the labour, and of course, the remuneration.

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Received on 23.09.2015

Modified on 02.10.2015

Accepted on 15.10.2015

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 6(4): October- December, 2015, 241-249

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2015.00032.7