Child labour in Africa is generally defined based on two factors: type of work and minimum appropriate age of the work. If a child is involved in an activity that is harmful to his/her physical and mental development, he/she is generally considered as a child labourer. That is, any work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children, and interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work. Appropriate minimum age for each work depends on the effects of the work on the physical health and mental development of children. ILO Convention No. 138 suggests the following minimum age for admission to employment under which, if a child works, he/she is considered as a child laborer: 18 years old for hazardous works (Any work that jeopardizes children's physical, mental or moral health), and 13–15 years old for light works (any work that does not threaten children's health and safety, or prevent them from schooling or vocational orientation and training), although 12–14 years old may be permitted for light works under strict conditions in very poor countries. Another definition proposed by ILO's Statistical Information and Monitoring Program on Child Labor (SIMPOC) defines a child as a child labourer if he/she is involved in an economic activity, and is under 12 years old and works one or more hours per week, or is 14 years old or under and works at least 14 hours per week, or is 14 years old or under and works at least one hour per week in activities that are hazardous, or is 17 or under and works in an "unconditional worst form of child labor" (prostitution, children in bondage or forced labor, armed conflict, trafficked children, pornography, and other illicit activities).
Africa has the world's highest incidence rates of child labour. A report by the United Nations' International Labour Organization reveals that in 2016 nearly 1 out of every 5 children partakes in child labor. The problem is severe in Sub-Saharan Africa where more than 40% of all children aged 5–14 labour for survival, or about 48 million children.
Although poverty is generally considered as the primary cause of child labour in Africa, recent studies show that the relationship between child labour and poverty is not as simple as a downward linear relationship. A study published in 2016 "Understanding child labour beyond the standard economic assumption of monetary poverty" illustrates that a broad range of factors – on the demand- and supply-side and at the micro and macro levels – can affect child labour; it argues that structural, geographic, demographic, cultural, seasonal and school-supply factors can also simultaneously influence whether children work or not, questioning thereby the common assumption that monetary poverty is always the most important cause. In another study, Oryoie, Alwang, and Tideman (2017) show that child labour generally decreases as per capita land holding (as an indicator of a household's wealth in rural areas) increases, but there can be an upward bump in the relationship between child labour and landholding near the middle of the range of land per capita. In addition to poverty, Lack of resources, together with other factors such as credit constraints, income shocks, school quality, and parental attitudes toward education are all associated with child labour.
The International Labour Organization estimates that agriculture is the largest employer of child labour in Africa. Vast majority are unpaid family workers.
The United Nations declared 2021 as the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.
Cultural history
Children in Africa have worked in farms and at home over a long history. This is not unique to Africa; large number of children have worked in agriculture and domestic situations in America, Europe and every other human society, throughout history, prior to 1950s. Scholars suggest that this work, especially in rural areas, is a form of schooling and vocational education, where children learned the arts and skills from their parents, and as adults continued to work in the same hereditary occupation. Even after retirement from formal work, Africans often revert to the skills they learnt when they were young, for example farming, for a living or enterprise. Bass claims this is particularly true in the African context.
Africa is a highly diverse and culturally continent. In parts of this continent, farming societies adhere to a system of patrilineal lineages and clans. The young train with the adults. The family and kinsfolk provide a cultural routine that help children learn useful practical skills and enables these societies to provide for itself in the next generation. Historically, there were no formal schools, instead, children were informally schooled by working informally with their family and kin from a very early age. Child labor in Africa, as in other parts of the world, was also viewed as a way to instill a sense of responsibility and a way of life in children particularly in rural, subsistence agricultural communities. In rural Pare people of northern Tanzania, for example, five-year-olds would assist adults in tending crops, nine-year-olds help carry fodder for animals and responsibilities scaled with age.
In northern parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Islam is a major influence. Begging and child labour was considered as a service in exchange for Quranic education, and in some cases continues to this day. These children aged 7–13, for example, were called almudos in Gambia, or talibés in Senegal. The parents placed their children with marabout or serin, a cleric or Quranic teacher. Here, they would split their time between begging and studying the Quran. This practice fit with one of the five pillars of Islam, the responsibility to engage in zakat, or almsgiving.
The growth of colonial rule in Africa, from 1650 to 1950, by powers such as Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and Netherlands encouraged and continued the practice of child labour. Colonial administrators preferred Africa's traditional kin-ordered modes of production, that is hiring a household for work not just the adults. Millions of children worked in colonial agricultural plantations, mines and domestic service industries. Children in these colonies between the ages of 5–14 were hired as apprentice without pay in exchange for learning a craft. Colonial British laws, for example, offered the native people ownership to some of the native land in exchange for making labor of wife and children available to colonial government's needs such as in farms and as picannins.
Child labour was also encouraged by new tax laws. British and French colonial empires introduced new taxes to help pay for the local colonial government expenses. One of these, called the Head Tax, imposed a tax payable by every person, in some cases as young as 8-year-old. Regional populations rebelled against such taxes, hid their children, and in most part had to ensure their children were involved in economic activity to pay such taxes and pay their living expenses. Christian mission schools in Africa stretching from Zambia to Nigeria too required work from children, and in exchange provided religious education, not secular education.
In late colonial period, colonial governments attempted to run schools and educate children in parts of Africa. These effort were generally unsuccessful both in terms of enrollment and impact. Few children enrolled. Even when children enrolled, it did not necessarily mean regular attendance. Chronic absenteeism, or children dropped out of the schools to instead "go to sea with the fishermen." Jack Lord claims in his reviews of scholarly papers of African colonial history, that late colonial era experience suggests children and families made decisions based on complex combination of economic factors such as household income, state of the family, and cultural factors that considered working with families as a form of education and a form of developing social and human capital.
Contemporary child labour
Agriculture alone employs more than 30% of all African children aged 10–14. Informal economy such as small scale artisanal mines is another significant employer of child labour.
Burkina Faso According to the United States Department of Labor in 2012, 37.8% of children in Burkina Faso aged 5-14 were working, while another 13.6% were both going to school and working.
Children working in granite quarries and gold mines were working 6 to 7 days a week for up to 14 hours per day. So-called "payment" is in the form of food to eat and a place to sleep. Since that time, the government has adopted a National Action Plan, and in collaboration with Interpol, have since have rescued many children from child trafficking.
By 2023, the percentage of children working in Burkina Faso had dropped slightly to 35.7%, according to the United States' Department of Labor.
Christian Children's Fund of Canada (CCFC) has partnered with EDUCO, a fellow member of the ChildFund Alliance, to implement a European Union-funded project in north Burkina to prevent children from working in mines.
Democratic Republic of the Congo In 2008, Bloomberg claimed child labour in copper and cobalt mines of DR Congo that supplied Chinese companies. 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. 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.
BBC, in 2012, accused Glencore of using child labour in its mining and smelting operations of Africa. Glencore denied it used child labour, and said it has strict policy of not using child labour. Glencore claimed being aware of child miners who it claimed were part of a group of artisanal miners. They had without authorisation raided Glencore's concession since 2010, and the company claimed it has been pleading with the government to remove the artisanal miners from its concession.
About 4.7 million children aged 5–14 work in Congo. In addition to copper mines, children with their families participate in illegal artisanal mining of cobalt, wolframite, cassiterite, columbite-tantalite, gold, diamonds. As of 2024, an estimated 40,000 children work in artisanal mining in the Congo. 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. Workers including children suffer injuries, amputations and death as the result of the hazardous working conditions and mine tunnel collapses during artisanal mining of cobalt which is used in cell phones. 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.
Egypt
Ghana The 2010 United States Department of Labor estimated over 2.7 million child laborers in Ghana, or about 43% of all children aged 5–14. 78.7% of these children work in agriculture, 17.6% in fishing and transportation services, and 3.7% in industry, which includes manufacturing work and mining. In Ghana 64% of children seek work for financial reasons, making it the leading driver for child labor in the region. Most children working in rural areas are working on family farms and often combine schooling with their work. In Urban areas, such as Accra and Ashanti children are often not enrolled in school and are often engaged in artisanal fishing and domestic services. Child porters, locally called kayaye, work in urban areas and some of them are as young as 6 years.