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Labour studies in the African colonial period are facing a revival, but literature on the role and working conditions of children remains over-generalized. At the same time, child labour has played a central role in economic activities in Africa, and it still does. This article contributes to filling this gap by studying Portuguese colonial Africa as a narrative of tension between labour market forces, public policy, and (limited) agency of children. Labour scarcity facing demand hikes contributed to the increased use of children for labour in the colonial period. We contribute to the history of African labour by compiling data on the – until now – largely neglected use of child labour in mining and agriculture in the Portuguese African colonies. We find children were used to support adults or, with less agency, simply replaced (often forced) adult labour in plantations, mining, and other activities abandoned by adults. (Promised) wage differentials, taxes, forced labour, pass systems, and forced cultivation schemes acted as (dis)incentives to labour migration. Intra and inter-country movement of large numbers of adult labourers stimulated the demand for child labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines a tension that plays itself out in rural areas throughout Africa. On the one hand, it is recognized that children throughout the world engage in economic activity, and this is particularly so in rural areas. On the other hand, is the policy, corporate and NGO focus on the elimination of child labour from the production of a small number of African export commodities. We argue that a key to resolving this tension and opening the door to more effective interventions to address children's harmful work is to reframe the problem of, and debates around, child labour by changing the focus to children's work. The article briefly explores some implications of this shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study that investigated the effectiveness of child labour laws intended to promote child rights and the protection of children from unfair and forced labour. Legal scholars distinguish between child work and child labour: forced child labour manifests itself in abusing children sexually, forcing children to work on farms, and compromising children's rights to education. Although South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia have laws in place to protect children from child labour, the abuse of children continues in these countries. Furthermore, although these three countries are signatories to conventions of the International Labour Organization that seek to eliminate child labour, they have been unable to stem the tide of child labour. This article argues that there is a need for the three countries to work closely together to implement policies that reverse or fight against child labour. The researchers used a qualitative methodology to interpret the variations in the application of child labour laws. They found there are no harmonised laws to deal with child labour in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Hence, this article recommends that an independent supranational organisation be established in Southern Africa to monitor, evaluate, and implement progressive laws to eradicate child labour in line with internationally recognised best practices as set out in child labour laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) envisages that by 2016, no child should be engaged in any form of hazardous labour. This goal is a furtherance of the universally guaranteed right of all children to be protected from child labour. The majority of, if not all African states recognise the right of children to be protected from child labour. This means that this freedom cannot be taken away from children. This notwithstanding, Africa registers the highest incidence of child labour in the world and it is highly unlikely that with the current pace, the ILO target will be hit. This article argues that whereas recognising the right of children to be protected from child labour is an ideal perspective through which child labour should be viewed and addressed, such recognition cannot of itself form a complete solution to the problem. Translating this right into reality requires conscious efforts, not only on the part of African governments but the international community as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the connections between African workers and Christian missions in late nineteenth-century Zanzibar, focusing on the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA), a High-Church Anglican missionary society. Procuring and managing labour was central to the everyday lives of Christian mission societies because missionaries demanded a range of skilled and unskilled workers – including builders, cooks, water-fetchers, porters and servants – in order to establish an ideal setting for the core aims: the conversion of souls and establishment of an African ministry. The missionaries constantly veered between submitting to local customs and conditions, and imposing their own ideals of what they felt to be the proper management and division of labour. A good example of this was their employment of slaves, a practice that was not always illegal for British subjects and particularly widespread amongst explorers in need of porters. At the same time, the missionaries often had to abandon their belief that they must not exercise formal authority outside the main nucleus of the clergy, as they managed their labour forces and attempted to reform freed slaves into skilled free wage workers. These issues bear on how historians understand the tensions between conversion, cultural adaption, industrialisation and capitalism, but it also says something of the role of missionaries and Christian Africans as cultural brokers between the mission economies and the local economies they interacted with. This article addresses the missionaries' employment of hire slaves, the attempts to establish Christian working communities and the use of household labour with regard to women and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protection of children confronting adversity has become one of the central priorities of humanitarian interventions worldwide. The array of child-focused rights and protections established by international, regional and national frameworks provides a normative foundation guiding efforts to facilitate the (re)establishment of more secure conditions. Despite a rhetorical acknowledgement of participation as enhancing children's provision and protection rights, much of children's rights activism in Africa continues to emphasise a protectionist approach over an empowering one. Furthermore, actualising children's rights constitutes a formidable challenge in fragile countries like South Sudan where difficult post-war conditions are compounded by significant discrepancies regarding the treatment of children in the various applicable legal systems. Advancing the view of children's rights as a living practice moulded by children's everyday realities, this paper discusses the situation of South Sudan as illustrative of the dilemmas of upholding the right of conflict-affected children in Africa to participate in their own protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no doubt that child focus in the social protection agenda makes development and economic sense, yet child-sensitive social protection still remains elusive in some African country programmes. The case study of the Productive Safety Net Programme in Ethiopia discussed in this paper shows that the child-conditioned component in both the design and the implementation of this huge social protection programme is largely absent. Child-sensitive social programming, which discretely improves children's schooling and access to basic health care services and protects them from child labour, is recommended, with prioritisation of child labour saving assets as one of the key interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background The adverse effects of child labour on the children's psychological development continue to raise concerns about this public health problem worldwide. Several views have been presented by child health authorities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international agencies. Few studies have focused on the children themselves. This study sought to determine working children's perspective of child labour, its benefits and disadvantages and the working children's perceptions of themselves, and their aspirations for the future. Methods A cross-sectional study was carried out among working children in a large market in Ibadan, south-west Nigeria. Questionnaires were administered to all consenting children. Results A total of 225 children, 132 females and 93 males, participated in the survey. Their age range was 8–17 years. A total of 103 respondents (46%) were currently in school while 117 (52%) were out of school. Five respondents (2%) had never attended school. A total of 104 (46%) thought that children should not work. However, when asked about the benefits of working, 81 working children (36%) felt that work provided a source of income for them, 52 (23%) indicated that it was a way of helping their parents and 39 (17%) thought it was part of their training to be responsible adults. Bad company, ill health and road traffic accidents were the perceived ill effects of child labour. The majority of the children interviewed were aspiring towards artisan trades and very few towards professional or office jobs. A total of 106 (47%) children perceived themselves as less fortunate than their peers. Fifty-five children (24%) thought that child labour was a sign of deprivation. The perception that child labour is a sign of deprivation was more prevalent among child workers whose highest educational attainment was primary school, child workers who had worked for more than 6 months and those whose earnings were small. Conclusion We recommend that school education for children should be a priority even when the harsh economic realities in their families force parents to send them to work outside the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the global and African postures on the issues of child abuse and child labour. The global ethical ideals of the issues are characterized within their various theoretical perspectives while the African cultural realities are explored through the use of focus group discussion sessions, which were organized in six rural farming communities in Nigeria. The qualitative data collected are reported in a box form. The emerging facts among others are the consensus of the global and African perspectives on the need to: protect children against hazards and dangers (physical and psychological injuries); provide basic needs for children so as not to make them responsible for the needs too early in life and; allow children to go to school in order to be educated. However, it was revealed that what is considered an abuse in a culture may not be regarded as an abuse in another. The African culture thus emphasized the importance of training as a socialization process, especially in farming and home chores. These are achievable in the prevailing culture, social and environmental conditions in which the children are being raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Liminality brings confusion among children as they cannot progress to the next stage of life, neither could they regress to their previous state of events. The situation is precarious for socioeconomic deprived children in Africa as it cast aspersion on their career, health and well-being. The study, therefore, examines the experiences' of children who were supposed to be in school but were observed working at the informal market space in Africa. Methods: Qualitative data was collected through referral and non-discriminative snowballing. Fourty-eight participants (48-KII 2, IDI 10, FGD 6–6 person per group, total 36) from Aleshinloye and Bodija markets in Southwest Nigeria were included in the study. Results: Parental poverty, poor education facilities, peer influence, and the frequent strike by education institutions (pre-tertiary and tertiary) were implicated for the prevalence of child labour in the informal market space in Southwest Nigeria. Conclusions: The negative consequences of the liminality stage far outweigh the positive. Therefore, there is a need for conscientious efforts by community leaders, parents, and relevant stakeholders in the society to eradicate snags within the liminality of children's education in order to curb child labour. This is necessary to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child labour remains a prevalent global concern, and progress toward eradicating harmful children's work appears to have stalled in the African continent and henceforth, integrated social policy intervention is still required to address the problem. Among several forms of social policy interventions, stomach infrastructure (i.e., in-kind and/or cash transfers) have been a key policy approach to support vulnerable families to lighten households' resources burden, which forces them to consider child labour as a coping strategy. There is growing evidence on the impacts of these programs in child labour. However, this evidence is often mixed regarding children's work outcomes, and the existing studies hardly describe such heterogeneous outcomes from the child-sensitive approach. To this end, a systematic literature search was conducted for studies in African countries. From 743 references retrieved in this study, 27 studies were included for the review, and a narrative approach has been employed to analyse extracted evidence. Results from the current study also demonstrate a mixed effect of in-kind and cash transfers for poor households on child labour decisions. Hence, the finding from the current review also demonstrates a reduced participation of children in paid and unpaid work outside the household due to in-kind and cash transfers to poor households, but children's time spent in economic and non-economic household labour and farm and non-farm labour, which are detrimental to child health and schooling, has been reported increasing due to the program interventions. The question remains how these programs can effectively consider child-specific and household-related key characteristics. To this end, a child-sensitive social protection perspective has been applied in this study to explain these mixed outcomes to inform policy design.