ANTONIN’S STORY

Fuzz Kitto

Fuzz Kitto is co-Director of Be Slavery Free, a coalition of organisations seeking to end modern slavery through engagement with business, government and consumers. He believes we can only end slavery when we work together.

I met Antonin in Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire as I was walking from my hotel to find an ATM. He crossed the road and walked alongside me and asked, “are you a big man?”. A big man in West Africa is someone who has influence, has some power and is generally considered wealthy. What pursued in his broken English and my very broken French was a discovery of his story.

Antonin’s parents were originally from Burkina Faso. But due to the conflicts and armed violence they fled to Côte d’Ivoire. They heard you could carve out land from the forests and start cocoa farms. The rumour was that there was good money to be made. The reality was Antonin had 7 siblings, but the farm was only 3 hectares, and the cocoa prices fluctuated each year. There was not enough money to hire adult labourers so as soon as one of the children reached 8 years of age they had to work on the farm. The only school was 20kms away. They had no money for the school fees, and even if they could afford it getting to school and back on the bad roads was almost impossible – even on a bicycle! Of course, there was no money for a bicycle anyway.

When I heard Antonin’s story, I tried to say that it was not right or fair for him and the other children to have to work on the cocoa farm and not go to school. He then told me one of his brothers had got very sick from using the chemicals on the farm and desperately needed medical attention but the effort to get him to a hospital was too difficult due to the poor roads, and costs of transport and any medical expenses were out of their reach. Now Antonin’s brother was chronically ill and cannot work on the farm. So Antonin walked for days to get to a main road and hitched a ride to their nearest town and then to Abidjan to find work and help for his family.

I tried to explain that it wasn’t fair nor right that children from such a young age wasn’t going to school but using the machetes and the chemicals. He looked at me and said “but with what we get for our cocoa, we have to do that!”.

The poverty caused by low and unstable prices of cocoa is inextricably linked to the child labour that occurs in West Africa. That is why, we look at policies on living income and child labour when we assess chocolate companies for the Chocolate Scorecard – they tell the story of the plight of many West African cocoa farmers.