Little Hands That Lift Loads

Child labor thrives in West Africa despite stringent policies against it.

- Peace Hyde

It’s the crack of dawn in Obuasi, Ghana, and Kwame Twumasi’s work has just begun on the farm owned by his uncle in the forest. Like every day, what lies ahead is hard manual labor.

He begins by using a chainsaw to clear a wooded area. This done, Twumasi climbs a cocoa tree and with a large machete, expertly cuts down cocoa bean pods. Five young boys wait patiently below ready to stuff the pods into large sacks that sometimes weigh as much as 90kg.

They slowly haul the sacks – at least three times their individual weight – on to their bare backs and lug them through the forest to the depot.

“Sometimes, the bags are so heavy that we struggle to drag them and it takes two people to move them to the depot. One day, the bag was so heavy that it broke and we were beaten badly,” says Twumasi.

Twumasi is 13 years old and has been working as a slave since the age of nine, when his mother passed away and he was sent to live with his uncle in the Ashanti Region. His story mirrors that of countless, hapless children being used as cheap labor by farmers all over West Africa to keep the costs of labor and production down.

“We barely make enough to survive. I am making about GHS200 ($41) a month as a cocoa farmer and there is a lot of competition out there as these international brands have no loyalty to us. We have to do what we can to keep costs low, and children help make that possible,” says Kofi (real name withheld), Twumasi’s uncle.