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Alma Aguirre
December 2, 2016
Managerial Economic
Extra Credit
Child labor in Cocoa Farms “Bitter Sweets”
In the article, the author starts by talking about his experience encountering a young boy as he drove in his SUV
to meet some coco framers. The author and his crew stop to interview the boy carrying a dusty blade. The young boy
said his name was “Ibrahim Traoré” and 15 years old. Behind him was a sign about child labor with a big x, saying the
place for children was in school. However, Ibrahim told a brief story about how he moved from Mali to work in Ivory
Coast with his father in the cocoa farms and never went to school. Then a parade of young boys carrying machetes
approached and he had to go.
Ibrahim’s story represents a serious problem for the chocolate industries that has been vowed to be fixed for 15
years already and little success. Investigation has found that child labor in West Africa has been trafficked to Ivory Coast,
holding children as slave laborers. In a recent documentary, young boys were interviewed and they told BBC filmmakers
how they have been beaten and forced to work long hours without pay. When the document was showed, it outraged a
lot of consumers. The multinational chocolate makers depend heavily on West Africa for Cocoa, and demand is also
going up. When the media attracted the attention of the U.S. politicians, they urged the industry to fix the issue on child
labor. The chocolate makers agreed on fixing the issue, in which the deadline was pushed back multiple times. The
deadline in agreement is set for 2020 to reduce child labor by 70%.
