Child workers are the chocolate industry's 'dirty secret'

In Ghana's eastern cocoa-growing regions, children as young as 10 are wielding large machetes to clear weeds on farms, tasks they should be performing in school. These children work long days for meager pay, earning as little as two or three Ghanaian cedis ($0.37) per hour – barely enough to buy a banana, let alone a loaf of bread. Their families often have no other choice, as survival depends on this labor.

This child labor occurs within the supply chain of the multi-billion-dollar global chocolate industry. For more than two decades, major chocolate companies have pledged to eliminate child labor from their supply chains. Certification schemes such as Rainforest Alliance and Cocoa Life aim to reassure consumers that they are making ethical choices when purchasing chocolate products.

However, investigations in Ghana reveal a stark contrast between these industry promises and the reality on the ground. Traveling deep into remote cocoa-growing areas, often near the border with Côte d'Ivoire, reveals the extent of the child labor crisis. Ghana, along with Côte d'Ivoire, is central to this issue, with an estimated 800,000 cocoa farms in Ghana, most owned by families living below the poverty line.

Evidence, including videos and photos obtained by Four Corners, shows children performing back-breaking work on cocoa farms during school hours. This constitutes child labor, defined as work that prevents children from attending school or exposes them to dangerous tasks like using machetes or spraying chemicals. In Ghana, such work during school hours or hazardous tasks are illegal for children.

The boys filmed clearing weeds were identified as living in a community participating in Cocoa Life, the flagship sustainability program of Mondelēz, the owner of Cadbury. This program promises to support cocoa farming communities and help tackle child labor, but the investigation raises questions about its effectiveness in preventing child labor on the farms it aims to support.