US gov’t grants $1.5m for child labour monitoring in Ghana, Ivory Coast cocoa areas

The US Department of Labour has given a $1.5 million grant to the Tulane University’s Payson Center for International Development to conduct child labour surveys in cocoa-growing areas in Ghana and Ivory Coast.

The funding is a follow-up to an earlier Department of Labour grant the Payson team received to collect data on West Africa’s cocoa industry, Tulane University announced in a press release December 6, 2012.

According to the University, the survey data collected by the Payson Center “will be used to measure trends in the worst forms of child labour in agriculture, including the cocoa sector, in these countries.”

As part of the new project, the Center also will design and implement training activities for the national statistical offices and other local stakeholders in Ghana and Ivory Coast focusing on survey research and data analysis related to child labor in the cocoa sector.

The press release said William E. Bertrand, Wisner Professor of Public Health in Tulane’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is the principal investigator of the project and Elke de Buhr, assistant professor at the Payson Center, is co-principal investigator.

Between 2006 and 2011, the Tulane-Department of Labour collaboration has monitored progress made in the cocoa sector of Ghana and Ivory Coast.

By Ekow Quandzie