The nearly US$10 million Abena Dakwa Village, built by American YouTuber James Stephen Donaldson, popularly known as MrBeast, in Ghana’s Eastern Region, has put a familiar problem in the cocoa industry back in the spotlight: children working on farms instead of in classrooms.
The project, unveiled in MrBeast’s latest video, centers on a simple intervention: giving families access to education, healthcare, clean water, food, and economic opportunities so children face less pressure to work on cocoa farms. The community includes a school for more than 300 children, teacher housing, a clinic, a marketplace, solar power, clean-water infrastructure and agricultural facilities. Students are also expected to receive free school meals for five years.
MrBeast said the project was part of efforts to tackle child labour in Ghana’s cocoa sector, stating: “We did this to help kids get out of illegal child labour on cocoa farms.”
The intervention comes at an important point for Ghana, where child labour remains closely linked to agriculture and poverty. UNICEF says about 21 per cent of children aged 5 to 17 in Ghana are involved in child labour, with agriculture and fishing accounting for a significant share of that work. The organisation has also estimated that about 770,000 children live and work in cocoa-growing communities.
The cocoa sector is not the only area of concern. Child labour also persists in activities including illegal mining, making enforcement across different supply chains a continuing challenge. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has identified cocoa and gold mining among the key sectors requiring stronger action to eliminate child labour in Ghana.
The government has been building mechanisms to respond to the problem. Last week, the Labour Department, working with International Justice Mission, began a capacity-building programme for officers from the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana Cocoa Board and other institutions to improve their response to child labour and human trafficking.
Head of the Child Labour Unit at the Labour Department, Esther Ofori Agyemang, said the training was intended to give law enforcement officers a clearer understanding of the laws governing child labour and human trafficking and help them distinguish between permissible light work and activities that amount to child labour.
She also said the programme had been expanded to include the Ghana Cocoa Board and other institutions to strengthen coordination among agencies working on the issue, with plans to extend the training to other regions.
That coordination matters because removing children from farms is only one part of the problem. The economic conditions that put them there also have to change.
Ghana’s own child-labour strategy recognises this. The country’s Accelerated Action Plan Against Child Labour 2023–2027 brings together government, development partners, the private sector and civil society, while recent programmes supported by UNICEF, ILO and other partners have focused on education, social protection, child protection and livelihoods in cocoa-growing communities.
MrBeast’s intervention therefore offers a useful example of what happens when child labour is approached not only as an enforcement problem but also as an economic and development problem.
The nearly $10 million investment is being used to create the basic conditions that can make school a realistic alternative to farm work. That approach is particularly relevant to Ghana’s cocoa sector, where low household incomes, limited services and seasonal demands on farms can influence whether children remain in school.
Ghana now needs to take this approach beyond individual communities.
The country cannot build a new village around every cocoa-growing community where child labour exists. A more sustainable response requires investment in rural education, household incomes, farmer productivity, social protection and stronger monitoring of cocoa supply chains.
It also means modernising cocoa production itself.
Better use of technology, mechanisation and improved farming practices could reduce the sector’s dependence on intensive manual labour while raising productivity. Better access to farm equipment, digital extension services, improved seedlings, irrigation and climate-smart technologies can help farmers produce more without increasing reliance on children.
The ILO’s recent work in Ghana already points in this direction, combining child-labour interventions with climate-smart cocoa production, improved livelihoods, stronger child-protection systems and better school attendance.
The issue goes beyond protecting children from hazardous work today. It is also about protecting the quality of Ghana’s future workforce.
Every child kept away from school and placed into exploitative labour represents lost education, skills and productive potential. Tackling child labour in cocoa therefore needs to be treated not only as a child-protection obligation, but also as an investment in the future productivity of Ghana’s agricultural sector and economy.
MrBeast’s Abena Dakwa project has brought fresh attention to that challenge. The task for Ghana is to turn that attention into stronger systems, better rural livelihoods, and a cocoa industry where children can grow up around farms without having to work on them.
