Daily Times

BONIKRO: “At five years old, I went to work in the fields with my dad. Today, my children go to school,” said Peter, a cocoa farmer in Bonikro in the centre of Ivory Coast. Peter is one of a generation of farmers at the heart of a drive to keep the country’s children in school and away from its vast plantations. Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, has struggled to prevent children working in the cocoa sector, long an accepted practice in the countryside.

The industry, which accounts for 15 percent of GDP and more than 50 percent of export receipts as well as two-thirds of the country’s jobs, is absolutely vital to the country’s economic welfare, according to the World Bank. But criticism of its record on child labour by consumers and buyers has in the past threatened to tarnish cocoa from the Ivory Coast and undermine its main export, prompting authorities to act.

The government’s scheme to get children off the plantations and into school, launched in 2011, is as much about improving the country’s image overseas as it is about protecting its young people. Sylvie Patricia Yao, the leader of the campaign and chief of staff to the country’s first lady, said that education would help limit child exploitation in the cocoa sector. “(It) remains for us the alternative and the most effective response in the long-term fight against child labour,” she said.

In 2011, the west African country announced plans to spend almost 20 million euros ($22.4 million) between 2015-2017 to reduce the number of minors working on plantations by 30 percent by 2017 and 70 percent by 2020. Since 2011, 17,829 classrooms have been built or restored, according to the National Monitoring Committee (CNS), which is charged with overseeing the government’s anti-child labour efforts.

It is hoped that the plan will break the cycle of children following their parents into the fields at a young age. Djouha Gneprou, a cocoa planter in Goboue in the country’s west, is involved with a school opened by global food giant Nestle in 2013. “Once the child is in school, they won’t have time to be in the field so they can’t do the heavy work,” he told AFP. Despite the scheme, recent figures highlight the challenges in the battle.