Across Nigeria, children, teenagers, and adults spend long days working on cocoa farms. Samuel* is one of these workers, a teenager who looks to be under eighteen – although he refused to tell us his age. Like the other workers on the farm, Samuel spends the day using a machete to chop down cocoa pods from trees, cut them open and remove the cocoa beans for drying and fermenting – dangerous work for anyone, but especially for children.
Samuel is far from home, from a different state in Nigeria, and said he misses his family. Although he would like to see his family again, he is not allowed to leave the cocoa farm; he explained that the farmer’s wife slaps him and threatens him whenever he leaves. Samuel also told us that he lives under “shade” in the farm, a small shelter, with no electricity or running water. He complained that it can be hard to sleep because of all the mosquitoes at night and said that during the last rainy season he had almost died when the shade he was living in collapsed during a thunderstorm. Samuel is just one of countless hired workers in Nigeria’s cocoa sector, often stuck in conditions of forced labor, living in poverty, and unable to leave to find better jobs.
Nigeria is the fourth largest producer of cocoa in the world, producing about 6.5 percent of global cocoa. Cocoa from Nigeria can be found in M&Ms, Hershey bars, Nutella, and other conventional chocolate candies. Many of the world’s major cocoa and chocolate companies buy cocoa from Nigeria, including Mars, Hershey, Ritter Sport, Ferrero, Olam, Barry Callebaut, Ecom, Sucden, Allbrecht and Dill, to name a few.
Although Nigerian cocoa is found in a variety of chocolate products, there is limited public information about the labor conditions in the Nigerian cocoa sector. To learn more, Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) and the African Law Foundation (AFRILAW) spent three months investigating and documenting labor abuses in the Nigerian cocoa industry. Working with a group of ten investigators, we visited over 90 farms in 34 Local Government Areas across five Nigerian states, speaking with adult and child workers on cocoa farms, farm owners, workers at warehouses, and cooperative chairmen.
These investigations resulted in clear evidence of widespread forced labor in the Nigerian cocoa sector. On numerous farms across the five Nigerian states we investigated, we found ample evidence of workers threatened and physically abused, underpaid, living on cocoa farms, and forced to work.
This is unacceptable. Cocoa farmers and workers on cocoa farms do the hard work – working in the hot sun to weed the farm, chop down cocoa pods using machetes, break them open, and dry and ferment the beans. Hired workers are often the most vulnerable and are taken advantage of by cocoa farmers – many of whom are not earning enough themselves, and certainly not enough to pay their adult workers a fair wage. At a time when multinational cocoa and chocolate companies are raking in massive profits, these companies must commit to creating an equitable cocoa sector; the first step to doing so is to pay a living income for the cocoa they buy.
Petitioning the US Government to Stop the Import of Cocoa Produced with Forced Labor
In fall 2023, CAL and AfriLaw submitted a petition to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (Section 307) providing evidence of widespread forced labor in the cocoa sector in five major cocoa-producing states in Nigeria. Under Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930, it is illegal to import goods produced wholly or in part in any foreign country by forced labor. If CBP, the US federal agency that enforces Section 307, finds there is reasonable suspicion that a good being imported into the United States was produced with forced labor, CBP can issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO), which stops the goods from entering the United States. This import prohibition can hit companies where it hurts – at their profit margin, as the products made with forced labor cannot be sold in the United States.
Based on the evidence we submitted, we urge CBP to issue a WRO. We hope that this petition sheds light on the Nigerian cocoa sector and acts as a catalyst for cocoa and chocolate companies to invest in their supply chains and in the farmers and workers who bear the brunt of exploitative working conditions in this inequitable industry.
Trafficking and Forced Labor in the Nigerian Cocoa Industry
Forced labor in the Nigerian cocoa sector is common, widespread, and systemic. In each of the five states the investigators visited, we documented multiple instances of forced labor.
Living Conditions
Across the five Nigerian states we visited, workers complained about abusive living conditions and low pay on cocoa farms. In multiple regions, workers reported living “in” or “on” the cocoa farm, which often means sleeping in ramshackle huts, sometimes made only of tarp held up by sticks. This “shade,” as it is often called, has no electricity or running water, often has no beds, and in many cases has no walls – and therefore is not closed to the outdoors. Workers complained about rodents and about how common and irritating mosquitoes are at night.
Payment Far Under a Living Wage
Workers on cocoa farms are chronically underpaid, usually earning only 100,000-120,000 Naira (approximately 223-264 USD) per year. This is far below the World Bank’s poverty line of $2.15 per day – and indeed under $1 per day and less than a twelfth of the most recent estimates for a living income for a family in rural Nigeria. In addition to the poverty wages, multiple workers reported not being paid on time or being paid just once a year. Such delayed payment and withholding of wages can make it difficult for workers to buy food and other necessities. Some workers described being hungry and having to forage for food if their employer did not bring them adequate food supplies. Because many workers live on cocoa farms, they are often far from towns or villages – or even, in some cases, other cocoa farms – and have no other way to find additional food.
Isolation
Cocoa farms are often quite far from villages or towns, leaving workers – who are often migrants from other regions or countries – isolated and alone. This isolation makes it all but impossible for workers to leave the farm, as they have no funds to travel or look for other jobs, and leaving the farm would result in losing the money owed to them. Workers reported being told by their employers that they were not allowed to leave the cocoa farms – and farmers also told us that they don’t let their workers leave. Some workers reported that such commands were accompanied by threats or violence.
Trafficking Patterns
Trafficking is very common in the Nigerian cocoa sector. Investigators for CAL and Afrilaw spoke with the chairman of the cocoa farmers association, who explained that farmers often hire workers from the Republic of Benin through agents. These workers are often paid in kind, with a motorbike, at the end of the year, rather than in cash. Not only does this result in workers having to spend their intended day of rest, Sunday, working to be able to pay for food; without being paid in cash, it is also more difficult for workers to leave the farm and find employment elsewhere – something that is already a real challenge given the fact that workers are often isolated, young, and in many cases away from home for the first time.
Evidence suggests that individual traffickers are well-known in each region. In one area, our investigators heard from farmers and workers about a trafficker who was known to recruit workers from other Nigerian states to work on cocoa farms. Teenagers – one who claimed to be eighteen and a sixteen year old – said that their trafficker had brought them from another region of the country to work on a cocoa farm. A farm owner also mentioned the trafficker, demonstrating how common and accepted trafficking is.
Forced Child Labor
Forced child labor is also common across the industry. In many cases, workers either admitted to being under eighteen or looked to be younger – sometimes significantly younger – than eighteen. Many of these children and teenagers had been trafficked from other states to work on cocoa farms. Because so much work on cocoa harms is hazardous – using machetes, spraying or being exposed to pesticides, and carrying heavy loads – children are likely exposed to at least one form of hazardous child labor while working on cocoa farms. Such work, when done by children, is clearly dangerous to their health and safety.
Deception
Deception was a widespread issue raised to investigators in numerous conversations with workers. Workers – and especially children – are often promised better working conditions or higher pay on cocoa farms than they find when they arrive. In a few cases, teenagers reported being promised opportunities to attend school, opportunities that never actualized. A couple of teenagers reported being promised they could attend schools, yet after working for multiple years on the cocoa farm, they had still not earned enough money to leave or attend school and had not been allowed to return to their education.
Remedy for Cocoa Farmers
The widespread trafficking and forced labor – not to mention the hazardous child labor and farmer poverty that are systemic in the sector – are clearly systemic issues in the sector and a result of the low prices companies pay for Nigerian cocoa. Nigeria’s cocoa sector is unregulated and market-based, allowing companies to pay cocoa farmers low prices for their beans. As a result, farmers earn too little and struggle to pay adult workers a fair wage. This leads farmers to exploit their workers, including children – unsurprisingly, the result is often that workers are in forced labor.
In our petition, we requested that CBP issue a Withhold Release Order (WRO) to prohibit cocoa or chocolate products produced with forced labor in the five Nigerian states we investigated from entering the United States. To lift the WRO, we requested that CBP require cocoa and chocolate companies sourcing from Nigeria to:
Pay a living income price for cocoa.
Commit to long-term contracts with cocoa farmers.
Publicly release information on their cocoa supply chains down to the farm level.
Ensure that they only source cocoa produced with legal forms of labor
These are preconditions for a fair, equitable, and sustainable cocoa sector in Nigeria. Across West Africa, cocoa farmers, their families, and workers are suffering and struggling to survive in an industry stacked against them. We urge CBP to take swift action. This would be a first step towards establishing a more equitable cocoa sector in Nigeria.
This blog post was published by Corporate Accountability Lab and the African Law Foundation.
