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The Hidden Ingredient in Chocolate: Africa’s Child, Part 2
Contributed by Shoshana Rice

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

According to the 2018 Cocoa Barometer, there are as many as 2 million child laborers in West Africa alone, many of whom were kidnapped and forced into the servitude of the chocolate industry.

Smugglers are paid to traffic children from countries like Mali and Guinea into the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Algeria. After they are handed off to farmers, the children are forced to work long hours in life-threatening conditions, carrying heavy bags of cocoa seeds, using sharp machetes, and climbing tall trees without equipment.

They are beaten with bicycle chains or cacao branches if they fail to meet required quotas or attempt an escape. These children are physically and psychologically abused and deprived of their childhoods to lay the foundation for other countries’ luxurious consumption of chocolate.

Institutionalized poverty breeds child slavery when farmers refuse to split profits fairly. The enslaved children miss out on educational opportunities, preventing income and skills to circulate the economy. And finally, since the countries’ economies are unable to grow and diversify, they remain stagnant and underdeveloped. Furthermore, cocoa-exporting countries like the Ivory Coast and Ghana have created a parasitic relationship that feeds off of Western countries’ chocolate consumption, fueling a strong dependency that represses development opportunities. Thus, child enslavement is both a cause and consequence of stagnated economic growth as it perpetuates a cycle of poverty and underdevelopment.
haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story
Source: tiny hand

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