Sub-Saharan Africa:Child Labour

In this blog I will be adressing the issue of child labour. Child labour happens in many countries around the world, with many of us oblivious to what is really going on. While many people have their own opinion and definition on child labour, the Union Aid Abroad website, I found, had the best overall definition: " Children under fifteen years of age are made to do work that is physically or mentally harmful, and interupts their education and social development. "
In Sub-Saharan Africa, almost half of the population is children. A paper on this issue states that, out of all of the African regions, Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the highest child labour rates. The International Labour Organization, or ILO, shows shocking statistics that 41% of Sub-Saharan children that are under the age of 14 are not getting an education, and even worse, around 80 million are working! The statistics shown here are approximately twice the Asian rate.
So why does child labour occur? Child labour can occur for many different reasons, one of the largest being poverty. Seeing as Africa is the poorest continent, it has a higher rate of child labour than you would expect to see in any other continent. The choice for child labour is often made by the children's family members, simply because it is one of their last resorts to make any money at all. Although poverty is sometimes used as a reason for child labour, it is not the only one. Families would hope that their child would make them money of course, being in the poor conditions they are in, but sadly most child labour is also done without pay, in their own household.  Yes, some people may believe that putting a child to work is a good idea because it will increase the childs intelligence of life and will make them mature faster, but they are obviously not thinking about, or even have an idea about the child labour that we are discussing here. The child labour we are discussing is specifically towards the children that are being made to work at too young of an age, which will in the future reduce their ability to succeed. They will not get the education they need, because instead they are slaving and working every day, where if they got the chance to go get an education they could make something of themselves and create stability for their family and for their future.

The Child Labor Public Education Project sheds light on the laws of Child Labour. There are laws in place against this, but even though those laws are placed, they are often not followed. Some laws aren't even fully against the labor, allowing it to still take place as long as it is in certain sectors and is involving agriculture or domestic work. The countries that do have strong labour laws also do not succeed well as they are under-staffed, under-funded and more.

graph showing child labour percentages in Sub-Saharan Africa

There is not much that we can do from where we are to stop child labour. I am sure even if we did manage to stop it somewhere, it will never be stopped completely. Children live their life day to day working and sweating to the bone, and they don't know anything else other than what they've been exposed to. If they got the chance to go to a school, and get an education even if it would take a very long time for them to become successful, I'm sure we couldn't even imagine the happiness in their eyes.

a poor child under labour trying to carry bricks

countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region

In this video you will see how we take what we have in this century for granted. We don't look beyond the product to think about where it was made, who made it, and how lucky we have it. This video is an eye opener to us all, I'm sure.