Action on Children’s Harmful Work in African Agriculture (ACHA) is a seven-year research programme supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) that started in January 2020.
The aim of the programme is to build evidence on:
- the forms, drivers, and experiences of children’s harmful work in African agriculture;
- interventions that are effective in preventing harm that arises in the course of children’s work.
It is currently assumed that the majority of children’s work in Africa is within the agricultural sector. However, the evidence base is very poor in regard to the prevalence of children’s harmful work in African agriculture; the distribution of children’s harmful work across different agricultural value chains, farming systems and agro-ecologies; the effects of different types of value chains and models of value chain coordination on the prevalence of harmful children’s work; and the efficacy of different interventions to address harmful children’s work. These are the areas that ACHA will address.
ACHA will initially work in Ghana with a focus on cocoa, inland fisheries and vegetables. Work will then expand to include other countries and commodities.
ACHA is a collaborative programme led by the Institute of Development Studies.
Key contacts
