Eighteen-year-old Gnoulla Yempabou started as a farmhand in cotton fields in Benin, when he arrived from neighbouring Burkina Faso a few years ago.
Now, Yempabou has his eyes on other business: he is slowly becoming interested in joining the child-trafficking racket.
The work is less backbreaking and the profit is good.
On the back of his boss’s motorcycle, Yempabou says he is on his way to Burkina Faso, about 60 kilometres northeast of Banikoara, to look for ”unskilled labourers” for the next cotton harvest.
”It is much easier to be a farmhand in Benin than in Burkina Faso where the land is hard to work,” he explains.
Banikoara, with a population of 150 000, is 700-kilometres north of Cotonou, the commercial capital of Benin. The town has always touted itself as the country’s breadbasket because of its promising agricultural yields — especially cotton, which is Benin’s main export.
”The cotton farming in Banikoara has created two phenomena: jobs and child-trafficking. The two are intertwined, and we are forced to live with them,” says Daniel Sabi Sabidare, the Mayor of Banikoara.
Cotton farmers in Banikoara earn about 13 billion CFA (about $22,8-million) from the crop every year. About 60 000 of the 350 000 metric tons of cotton produced in Benin are grown in Banikoara.
But few children go to school here. In some villages, schools do not exist, and when they do, they are either located far away from the residential areas, or they have no teachers, according to Adama Toubou of the Benin-based Africa Third Millennium Group, a non-governmental organisation.
”Child labour is cheap in Banikoara,” says Toubou, whose group is involved in the campaign to combat child trafficking and child labour.
”A farmer can have, on average, 10 children on his farm, for example,” says Gilbert Kogrembo of the Africa Third Millennium Group. The children, aged between six and 17, live on the farm, under harsh conditions. On average, they work ten hours a day, and are poorly nourished, he explains.
Statistics on child labour, as well as on child trafficking, varies in Benin. Some rights groups put the figure to as high as 150 000.
On foot, by bicycle or by car, a group of child traffickers ply the dusty roads between Benin and Burkina Faso looking for children to work in Banikoara.
”All that interests the Burkinabe children is the 60 000 CFA (about $105) they’re going to bring home at the end of the season, and the honour they’ll derive from their stay in Benin,” says Orou Mahame Doune, a local official on the border with Burkina Faso.
For a young Burkinabe, he says, ”having lived in Benin is considered an honour. A young person, who has stayed in Benin, is considered more heroic than someone who has never been here. He is more likely to be a catch to the girls, and more deserving of the community’s entrustment with greater responsibilities than the one who has never been to Benin. These perceptions only fuel the trafficking,” Doune regrets.
Africa Third Millennium Group has developed a project which it hopes will free 400 children, both from Benin and Burkina Faso, from the cotton fields, where they have helped make Banikoara the number one cotton-producing region in Benin.
The 59 000-US-dollar programme, known as the ”Support Project to Care for and Rehabilitate Children Victimised by the Worst Forms of Labour and Trafficking in Banikoara’s Agricultural Sector”, is funded by the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), a division of the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO).
The project, which began in April, aims to enrol the freed children in school or in vocational training centres, according to its chairperson, Cossi Bossou.
The project provides awareness training on the harm caused by child trafficking and child labour in Banikoara.
”Well-known and respected for its democratic tradition, Benin unfortunately also has the sad reputation of being a revolving door for a shameful trade in school-age children,” says Florent Adegbidi, the IPEC-ILO coordinator in Benin.
Benin is also a transit for child labour destined for Nigeria, Gabon and Cote d’Ivoire. ‒ Sapa-IPS