ILO collaborates with NASCENT Research and Development Organisation to implement direct interventions to eliminate child labour within communities in Uganda
The program of action will support children aged 14-17 years in vocational training and provide post-training support and transition from school to work, as well as referral of children to the formal education system.
In addition, the program of action will support children aged 14-17 years in vocational training and provide post-training support and transition from school to work, as well as referral of children to the formal education system.
We will create synergies with existing service providers, such as community-based organizations, government entities, different actors in the value chain, starting with those who provide inputs to marketing agents and enterprises, and other key market players such as financial institutions, to complement and support the implementation of interventions," explains Ms. Annah Kamusiime, Director of programmes, Nascent Research & Development Organisation.
In this way, we will consolidate efforts, avoid duplication and broaden the scope of support to beneficiaries," she continues.
The approach aligns with the ILO's ACCEL Africa outcome 2, which focuses on innovative, evidence-based solutions that address the root causes of child labour in coffee and tea supply chains, and includes:
Outcome 2.2: Men and women in member-based organizations, such as cooperatives, have improved access to productive, social, and financial services and improved capacity to address child labour issues in their enterprises.
Outcome 2.3: Workers and producers at the lowest levels of the supply chain are supported to diversify and improve their livelihoods, with particular attention to the specific needs of women.
Outcome 2.5: Boys and girls in vulnerable communities have access to quality education and vocational training, including support for school-to-work transition.
Beneficiaries of this agreement include more than 1,200 boys and girls who will be removed or prevented from child labor and reintegrated into school.
They also include children of legal working age who will be removed from child labor and provided with vocational training and post-training support based on assessments of local economic development potential combined with individual needs.
Adult male and female beneficiaries (parents, guardians, older siblings/heads of household) are also targeted as they will be helped to improve their incomes through income-generating activities and increased livelihood support.
Proposed services to improve livelihoods include digital tools for financial literacy, financial management and data recording, access to financial services to provide livelihood support to improve agricultural practices and establish alternative income generating activities.
Another proposed solution also includes digital platforms to connect member-based organizations, including cooperatives or VSLAs, with service providers.
The number of children engaged in child labour has risen to 160 million worldwide, an increase of 8.4 million in the last four years, and millions more are at risk from the impacts of Covid -19 (ILO and UNICEF, 2021).
The joint UNICEF-ILO Global Estimates 2020 shows a rather bleak picture of the child labour situation in Africa. In contrast to other regions in the world, Africa has seen a systematic increase in child labour since 2012, both percentage wise as well as in absolute numbers. In other words, if we want to achieve SDG target 8.7 on child labour, there needs to be a substantial increase of operations in Africa.
Like most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda has a high incidence of child labour. The 2016/17 National Household Survey[1] found that a total of 2,048,000 children out of the 8,973,000 aged 5-17 years were engaged in some form of child labour, representing 14% of all children nationally.
The prevalence of child labour in Uganda has increased substantially during COVID-19 from 21% to 36% (Uganda National Household Survey 2019/2020). The problem is mainly concentrated in rural areas and in the agricultural sector, including in commercial farming (e.g., rice, tea, coffee, sugarcane, tobacco), the mining sector and the domestic sector.
For these reasons, the third National Development Plan has prioritized the fight against child labour in the agricultural and mining sector. The ILO supports this fight through the Accelerating Action for the Elimination of Child Labour in Supply Chains in Africa (ACCEL) project, which targets Uganda's coffee and tea supply chains.
Child labour clearly exists in the coffee and tea supply chains in Uganda, some visible and some hidden and disguised as family labour or "children helping parents." Results indicate that about 65% of children are involved in some form of casual agricultural work, while about 40% are involved in other jobs.
Children reported spending 3.8 hours weeding tea, compared to 3.9 hours weeding coffee, while they spent 5 hours harvesting both crops, but more than 60% of children reported working more than 5 hours per day (Ibid).
In addition to coffee and tea, many children work in a variety of sectors, such as brick making, stone quarrying and mining, manufacturing, and construction.
This requires unique actions to address child labour in farm households. In designing this intervention, we are inspired by one of the recommendations of the ILO (2021) study [10], which calls for the need to employ multiple approaches to support farmers to make agriculture more profitable, including innovative approaches such as diversification, support for social financial services for farm households, and the VSLA methodology," said Ms. Jackie Banya, ILO Accel Africa Project Country Coordinator in Uganda.