A blockchain trial helps eliminate child labor (and safeguard education)

People all over the world enjoy sweets and desserts made from chocolate and cocoa after meals or during breaks from work. Few are aware that much of the cacao used in their production is harvested by children who are forced to work instead of attending school. JICA recently collaborated with Deloitte Tohmatsu Group in an initiative that used blockchain technology in an effort to eradicate child labor and safeguard children's educational opportunities. The project took place in Côte d'Ivoire in West Africa, where many children labor in support of the world's largest cocoa-producing country.To get more news about blockchain field survey, you can visit wikifx.com official website.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that one in ten children are child laborers. In Africa, where child labor is most common, the rate is one in five. Seventy percent of the world's working children are engaged in the agricultural sector, which includes the production of cacao and coffee beans. Most of them are also engaged in domestic labor, helping their parents and not attending school. Because it deprives children of educational opportunities, child labor continues to be a global problem. Although it has been decreasing in the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, and the Caribbean since 2016, it is actually increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa.

One of the major issues regarding child labor is that it prevents children from attending school. Depriving children of educational opportunities greatly limits their future access to jobs that provide sufficient income.

Côte d'Ivoire accounts for 43 percent of the world's cocoa production. It is reported that 38 percent of the country’s children between the ages of 5 and 17 who are raised in cocoa-producing households are engaged in child labor related to cocoa production.*1 There are multiple reasons for the proliferation of child labor. Côte d'Ivoire’s many small, family-owned farms rely on children for labor—a practice that has been passed down from generation to generation. Another major factor is that as consumers demand cheaper products, costs are shifted onto farmers, reducing their income. Of course, using children for the labor helps lower costs.
In order to eliminate child labor, it is important to make the production process of cacao transparent. This makes buyers such as exporters, retailers, and consumers aware of issues related to production, including child labor and farmer poverty. Buyers who are aware of these problems can be encouraged to purchase sustainable cacao instead at a premium (incentive) price. Paying this premium to farmers who do not employ child laborers not only improves these farmers' incomes, but improves their future quality of life by liberating the children from work so that they can receive an education.

JICA collaborated with Deloitte Tohmatsu Group for establishing a system for monitoring child labor by utilizing blockchain technology to make the current situation more transparent.

Blockchain technology allows many participants to share the same data, and protects the reliability of any information shared on this system. It is characterized by its high transparency and low cost of operation, as once registered, all the data is extremely difficult to alter and cannot be erased.

The project started as a trial demonstration in November 2021 in Gagnoa, a rural community 140 kilometers southwest of Yamoussoukro, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire. Participants include farmer-parents of children, members of farmer organizations, teachers and other school staff, and the monitoring team consisting of members of Beyond Beans, an NGO working to eradicate child labor practices in West Africa’s cocoa cultivation.

In the first step, school teachers input data of the attendance of the children into a database, while representatives from the farmer organizations also input information as to whether child labor was used on their farms. If two correlated entries did not match, the monitoring team interviewed both parties and conducted field visits before correcting the database entries. Then local traders paid premium prices for the cocoa beans produced by those farmers’ groups that had low rates of child labor and high rates of school attendance. Meanwhile, schools were rewarded for the accurate input of information in the form of maintenance and renovation of school facilities, improved school lunches, and educational materials.