page_title: Child labour in Africa
section_title: Cultural history
hierarchical_section_title: Child labour in Africa / Cultural history
caption_attribution_description: Gondar
context_page_description: 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, and 13–15 years old for light works, although 12–14 years old may be permitted for light works under strict conditions in very poor countries.
context_section_description: 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, specially in rural areas, was 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. 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
caption: A boy shoeshiner in Gondar, Ethiopia.
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