A jump past childhood

As rural Ethiopians struggle, child labour can mean survival.

Asmara Chanie herds cattle out to grazing fields at sunrise and herds them back at sundown. He is paid in sacks of barley, which feeds his family of six.

Himnat Yenealem scrubs floors, washes clothes and roasts coffee beans for her employer's breakfast. In return, she receives food, shelter and clothing.

Their jobs are the norm in Africa, where manual labour is the most common form of employment. But their ages would surprise many outsiders.

Asmara is 12, a skinny and friendly third-grade dropout who recently traded his backpack for a herder's whip when his father's harvest was poor. Himnat is a petite girl of 13, with chocolate-coloured curls and a solemn temperament, whose parents died of illnesses related to Aids four years ago, leaving her alone on the street.

"I was in a bad dilemma, so I said yes to working," Himnat said quietly, picking at her calloused hands. "I felt too scared. But at least this way, I wouldn't be homeless and I could try to upgrade myself."

Across sub-Saharan Africa, according to UN research, one-third of all children younger than 14 go to work each day, making a stark jump past childhood and into responsibilities that their peers in the West don't have to think about for years.

There are so many children on the continent working that education ministries list labour as the primary reason children quit primary school, followed by the loss of their parents to HIV/Aids and the inability to pay school fees. Many are employed informally, in neighbours' houses or fields, and paid with food or supplies; only those who work in large factories earn cash wages.

Real truth

"Unfortunately, child labour is the reality in Africa," said Afewerk Ketema, coordinator of Focus on Children at Risk, an Ethiopian aid group. He has recruited 30 working children, including Himnat, for a programme in this northern town of Lebasjie, in which they can attend evening or afternoon classes.

"The real truth is that child labour is not seen as wrong in rural Africa. In fact, it's a source of survival," Ketema said. "Children live the poverty and the poor crops more than anyone. And now with Aids, too, parents are often sick, die or are overtaxed raising other people's orphans ? There were so many cases of children being taken into homes as servants."

Ethiopia has one of the highest rates of child labour in the world, according to the United Nations' International Labour Organisation and the African Network for the Prevention of and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect. Nine million children ages 5 to 17 are employed, 90 per cent of them in the agricultural sector, the agencies reported.

Deeply religious society

Factors pushing children into the fields include ancient farming techniques, overworked land, the Aids epidemic and a booming population of 74 million.

This is a deeply religious society where families often have eight to 10 children. It is a society where Aids and other ailments have left 4.6 million children without parents - the largest number of orphans in the world, according to a joint study in 2004 by UN agencies and the Ethiopian Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

It is also an impoverished rural society where 85 per cent of the population farms two-acre plots of land, too small to turn a profit, and nearly every plot is worked to exhaustion. Studies have shown that cultures dependent on subsistence farming also have the highest rates of child labour.

"The actual style of agriculture hasn't changed in 2,000 years, and that affects everything," said Stuart William, a Kenyan who is working on a joint environmental and development project with the United Nations and the Ethiopian Agriculture Ministry. "When the crops fail because the land is overused, then the farmers sell off the animals. The family is then totally stripped of their assets. The farmer loses out in every way. The only thing left is to send the child to work for someone else."

Asmara 's family fell victim to such a chain of events. Last year, when the rocky brown topsoil of their farm became too eroded to plough, his weeping father, Bisat Chanie, reluctantly sold their last oxen. First he sent his oldest son, 16, to work at a sesame factory near the border with Sudan. Then he trudged up a steep hill to the nearest market to speak to a broker about finding Asmara a job.

"We had nothing. Our food was done," said the father, 50, a tall man with a grey beard, a white turban and a gentle manner. "I cried over sending them to work. I still cry. But I'm also proud of my sons for helping us. What other choices do we have?"

Contributing factors

Over several decades, nature and politics have conspired to keep Ethiopia one of the least developed nations on Earth. Some regions are prone to cycles of drought and famine, and farms depend heavily on rain. During the 1980s, the communist ruler, Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, neglected suffering regions that did not support his government, stalling development and exacerbating the effects of a 1984 famine in which an estimated one million people died.

Mengistu was toppled in 1991 and a reformist government was installed, but 7 years later it became involved in a border war with Eritrea, which cost both countries an estimated $1 million a day. Many foreign donors pulled out of development projects, including plans to build modern irrigation systems.

Recently, tensions between the countries have soared again and political problems have returned to Ethiopia. After a disputed election led to protests last autumn, numerous opposition leaders were jailed and remain behind bars. As a result, Western donors are seen likely to hold back $375 million in aid.

Renting tiny plots

Some of those opponents were pushing for reform of the current land system, in which the government rents tiny plots to farmers and makes it difficult for them to form cooperatives. But officials say industrialisation, not land reform, is the key to a better economic future for Ethiopia's children.

"The situation these children face, for even a few weeks, is heartache enough for a lifetime," Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in a recent interview in the capital, Addis Ababa. "We have made some progress in putting in place warnings to detect food shortages. But maybe we have done too little, too late."

Meles's government has been credited with making efforts to fight Aids, preaching family planning, planning for drought and attracting a few large factories. But until reforms reach into parched rural regions, children will have few alternatives but to work.

Himnat Yenealem, 13, a tiny girl with a round face, spoke softly about how her parents, who sold home-brewed beer to farmers, died of complications from Aids in their village 40 miles to the northwest. They had no rented land, and she was left with no place to live. Her only aunt was already overburdened with three children of her own.

She considered herself lucky, though, because she found work as a maid for a woman who was "moderate with me and never beat me for mistakes. She even let me go to school part time. I feel so happy about that, and now I work for her even harder".