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Child Porterage and Africa’s Transport Gap: Evidence from Ghana,
Malawi and South Africa
GINA PORTER, KATE HAMPSHIRE
Durham University, UK
ALBERT ABANE
University of Cape Coast, Ghana
ALISTER MUNTHALI, ELSBETH ROBSON
University of Malawi, Malawi
MAC MASHIRI
CSIR, Pretoria, South Africa
AUGUSTINE TANLE
University of Cape Coast, Ghana
and
GOODHOPE MAPONYA, SIPHO DUBE *
CSIR, Pretoria, South Africa
Summary. — Children’s load-carrying has been largely invisible in studies of African economies, being commonly subsumed under wo-
men’s or family labor. This paper, based on interdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative research in 24 sites, examines the role of child
porterage in helping to fill Africa’s transport gap and considers its developmental significance for education, well-being, and health. It
provides detailed information regarding the scale, nature, and perceived impacts of children’s load-carrying work in domestic and com-
mercial contexts, indicates the importance of gender and generational analysis, and explores key policy challenges.
 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Key words — child labor, gender, generational relations, education, health, cross-sectoral, head-loading
1. INTRODUCTION
Although the deficiencies in Africa’s transport systems are
widely acknowledged, detailed consideration of the social
and developmental implications of the continent’s “transport
gap” remains remarkably limited. In urban and rural areas,
wherever transport services are deficient, or households lack
the purchasing power to acquire transport equipment or pay
fares, much everyday transport work must be achieved
through pedestrian load-carrying. Water and fuel commonly
predominate among the loads being carried, even in urban
areas, because of the widespread lack of domestic piped water
and electricity (what Grieco (2009) terms “living infrastruc-
ture”); other items such as agricultural produce and groceries
are also regularly transported in this way. Loads are carried to
sustain the household and to facilitate participation in the cash
economy. Observation suggests that more goods are pedes-
trian head-loaded in Africa than are carried by motor vehicle:
the labor inputs in terms of time and effort are evidently enor-
mous but remain substantially uncharted. This information
deficit is strongly emphasized in a recent call for gender-disag-
gregated information on water collection to enable measure-
ment of progress toward MDG and other goals (Seager,
2010). However, the significance of the knowledge gap extends
much further than transport, water, and sanitation; it has vital
cross-sectoral significance, affecting performance in areas as
diverse as energy, agriculture, environment, and construction,
as well as health and education.
Load-carrying has considerable significance for African
household labor patterns, since the largest proportion of
*The study was funded by UK ESRC/DFID (RES-167-25-0028): how-
ever, the funders can accept no responsibility for any information provi-
ded or views expressed. We wish to thank our many respondents of all
ages, the young researcher team, and the Research Assistants (Ghana:
Samuel Agblorti, Broda Esia Donko, Regina Obli-Odei, Mercy Otsin,
Samuel Owusu, Ekaw Afful Wellington; Malawi: Linny Kachama, Matt-
hews Nkosi, Bernie Zakeyo, Bryan Mkandawire, Faith Hackim, Meya
Mkandawire, Lucia Desire, Maurice Zulu, Kisinger Chima, Joseph Chi-
waula; South Africa, Eastern Cape: Andisiwe Bango, Nokholo Hlezu-
pondo, Busi Luwaca, Noma Mlomo; South Africa, Gauteng/North West
region: Dumisane Buthelezi, Lucas Marole, Marinkie Molwelang). We
also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful com-
ments. Final revision accepted: April 4, 2012.
World Development Vol. 40, No. 10, pp. 2136–2154, 2012
 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
0305-750X/$ - see front matter
www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.05.004
2136
Author's personal copy
domestic load-carrying work is usually delegated to women
and their children (Porter, 2011). Load-carrying, 1 as a low-
status activity, is regarded culturally as a “female” activity
in most African societies (Barwell, 1996, pp. 25, 51; Bryceson
& Howe, 1993; Doran, 1990; Malmberg Calvo, 1994, p. 9).
However, while women’s role as head loaders is well-estab-
lished, children and young people’s domestic transport work
is commonly subsumed under women’s work rather than
receiving specific acknowledgment. Hemson (2007, p. 323),
observing water collection at four remote rural sites in South
Africa, reaches “the surprising conclusion” that children’s
involvement apparently exceeds that of women. In this paper,
we bring together detailed evidence from both qualitative and
survey research across 24 sites, to examine the incidence of
load-carrying among children in diverse urban and rural loca-
tions, and to explore its impacts on young lives.
Even in the child labor arena, research specifically focused
on load-carrying is sparse, especially regarding detailed gen-
der- and age-disaggregated information. Reynolds (1991) in-
cludes children’s load-carrying in her study of child labor in
the Zambezi valley. She emphasizes their role in carrying har-
vest produce, which is seen as women’s work: “Boys help but
fewer go than girls” (Reynolds, 1991, p. 55). There is some
age- (but little gender-) disaggregated information in studies
of West African cocoa production, where heavy loads are
identified as one of children’s potentially hazardous tasks
(International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), 2002,
2006). A small observational analysis of children’s work in
Western Ghana’s cocoa areas emphasizes hazardous ergo-
nomic exposures, but does not differentiate sufficiently be-
tween load-carrying and other agricultural tasks (Mull &
Kirkhorn, 2005). A subsequent survey of children in cocoa-
growing areas of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana indicates that,
although carrying (agriculture-related) heavy loads is widely
experienced in agricultural households (35% children aged 5–
17 in Cote d’Ivoire, 46% in Ghana), it is particularly prevalent
in cocoa production (80% in Cote d’Ivoire, 69% in Ghana),
especially among 12–17 year-olds (Tulane University,
2009). 2 A rare, gender- and age-disaggregated analysis of child
labor in Ivoirian cocoa production by Nkamleu and Kielland
(2006), including specific consideration of their role in trans-
port of cocoa from the fields provides important detail. They
find that while young girl children participate more than boys
in cocoa transporting (11% of boys aged 6–9 years but 16% of
girls in this age group), above 9 years boys’ participation
increasingly dominates (39% boys 10–14 years, compared to
27% girls; 60% boys 15–17 years compared to 43% girls). We
return to this later in the paper.
In transport studies, where load-carrying has received some
attention, age- and gender-disaggregated data are also rare
(Grieco, Apt, & Turner, 1996; Malmberg Calvo, 1994). How-
ever, research in five southern Ghana villages (Porter, 2002;
Porter, Blaufuss & Owusu Acheampong, 2007; Porter, Blau-
fuss, & Owusu Acheampong, 2011) provides both gender-
and age-specific information from traffic surveys and counting
and weighing of head loads. Girls under 18 years were carry-
ing loads of up to 36 kg and boys up to 39 kg; girls of 15+
were regularly carrying 20–30 kg. 3 These are not as high as
loads measured among young Nepali hill porters (where boys
aged 11–15 years carried 48 kg on their backs, equivalent to
134% of their body weight, see Malville & Malville, 1996)
but are still very substantial. Discussion with parents, children,
and teachers in the Ghana villages indicated a range of poten-
tial impacts and confirmed the importance of extending and
intensifying research within a larger and more diverse popula-
tion, which we have done in the current study.
We explore our data below, collected in diverse locational
contexts, with particular reference to configurations of power
embedded within families and communities that mold inter-
generational and gender relations and impact strongly on ur-
ban and rural lives across Africa (e.g., Chant & Jones, 2005;
Durham, 2000; Quisumbing & Pandolfelli, 2010), hypothesiz-
ing that these will have direct implications for patterns of child
porterage. Young people commonly occupy a lowly position
in African social hierarchies and this shapes family and com-
munity expectations about the youth labor contributions that
represent a precious resource, particularly in poor households
(Kielland & Tovo, 2006, p. 100; Shimamura & Lastarria-
Cornhiel, 2010). Bradley (1993) observes how, in many socie-
ties, young people’s labor tends to be allocated to the activities
with lowest returns per hour, such as load-carrying of domes-
tic water and fuelwood. Meanwhile, gender divisions of labor,
which emphasize women’s contribution to household repro-
duction, typically assign pedestrian transport of goods to fe-
males: girls as well as women. Thus, Bradley argues that
while women typically control the labor of girls and younger
boys (who tend to occupy the same space as women), as boys
grow older, they “make themselves less available to their
mothers by escaping from the social spaces that their mothers
control” (Bradley, 1993, 80). Consequently, boys from about
10 years move out of women’s sphere of influence, taking on
adult male tasks and abandoning “female” tasks such as
domestic load-carrying. The intersection of power relations
associated with age and gender is thus likely to have consider-
able influence on who carries what, with important repercus-
sions for young people’s educational achievement, health,
and well-being. While much discussion of child labor high-
lights the role of income poverty and credit (e.g., Ersado,
2005), the impact of the transport gap presents a research
question worthy of specific investigation: we ask, how wide-
spread is load-carrying among girls and boys in our diverse re-
search sites, how is this shaped by specificities of place, gender,
and generational relations, and what are the perceived impacts
on the lives and well-being of the young people concerned.
The paper commences by outlining data collection methods
and study sites, then considers load-carrying in domestic and
commercial contexts. This is followed by a discussion of po-
tential impacts on schooling, educational achievement, health,
and well-being. Attention is paid to differences associated with
age, gender, and settlement context. In the conclusion we con-
sider policy implications.
2. METHODS AND RESEARCH SITES
The research on load-carrying was conducted between 2006
and 2009 within a larger, interdisciplinary (anthropology/
geography/transportation) study of daily mobility among
young people aged approximately 7–18 years. (Henceforth
we use the terms “children” and “young people” interchange-
ably to refer to this age group.) In addition to conventional
academic research, 70 young people aged about 11–20 years
participated as peer researchers. The young researchers’ de-
tailed findings are not discussed in this paper, but are acknowl-
edged because they fed into the themes and questions posed in
the academic studies. The adult researchers conducted inten-
sive qualitative research (individual interviews, life histories,
focus group discussions, accompanied walks: over 1500 inter-
views in total) with children, their parents, and key informants
in 24 study sites, followed by a survey of approximately 125
children aged 7–18 years per site (n = 2967). The survey sam-
ple was obtained by taking households along transects, and
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2137
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randomly selecting one child per household for interview (by
drawing lots). We draw extensively on both qualitative and
quantitative data sets in the discussion which follows. In-depth
qualitative research helped provide a base for the selection and
framing of our survey questions and an essential aid to reflec-
tion on subsequent survey results. Where statements from the
qualitative research are cited, these are strongly representative
of a wider set of material (unless the contrary is specifically
stated).
In each country these studies took place in two contrasting
agro-ecological zones: in Ghana, the coastal savanna and for-
est belts; in Malawi, the highlands and central plains; in South
Africa, Eastern Cape and Gauteng/Northwest Province. In
each zone four settlements were selected: poor, high density
urban [U]; peri-urban [PU]; rural with basic services (a pri-
mary school, possibly a clinic) [RS] and remote rural without
services [RR]. This gave eight sites per country, 24 sites in to-
tal, allowing us to compare load-carrying in diverse condi-
tions. All remote rural sites [RR] in the three countries were
located away from a paved road and very poorly served by
motorized transport. The rural with service sites [RS] were
also on unpaved roads, but were better served with transport,
though fares tended to be considerably higher (often double)
those on paved roads. In all rural sites except coastal Ghana,
bicycles were quite commonly used by adult males for personal
travel and some loads: in remote rural sites, for instance, 27%
of survey children’s households in Ghana had working bicy-
cles, 58% in Malawi, and 33% in South Africa. However, these
were often unavailable to children, especially girls. In rural
Malawi bicycle-taxi services were also common, and in rural
Malawi and South Africa’s North West Province, ox-carts
or donkey-carts provided transport in some (richer) house-
holds. In the majority of peri-urban sites [PU] a paved road
with regular transport services was accessible within about
3 km of most homes. All the urban sites [U] had access to
motorized transport services nearby, though the neighborhood
itself could be served predominantly by poor unpaved roads.
3. CHILDREN’S UNPAID LOAD-CARRYING IN
DOMESTIC SETTINGS
This section examines children’s unpaid load-carrying, prin-
cipally conducted for the benefit of the household in which
they live (i.e., including themselves). Water, fuelwood, refuse
and, in rural areas, farm produce, are the most common items
carried on a regular basis.
(a) Water
Water is the most common load and is thus discussed in de-
tail. It has to be carried in most sites because even if (as in the
case of urban locations, especially South Africa) some houses
have mains piped water, the supply is often broken. In remote
rural areas water may have to be carried considerable dis-
tances, especially in the dry season. Table 1 gives an indication
of the scale of children’s reported water-carrying burden in the
three countries. Over three-quarters of children surveyed in
Ghana carried water every day in the week preceding the sur-
vey; the same was true of more than half of children in Malawi
and more than a quarter of those in South Africa. Within
countries, children’s water-carrying activities varied by sex,
age, settlement type, and agro-ecological zone: Table 2.
In the Ghana study sites, both boys and girls carry a heavy
water burden, with no significant gender differences. In South
Africa the burden carried by girls is somewhat higher than that
carried by boys, while in Malawi there is a very marked differ-
ence overall, with girls carrying substantially more frequently
than boys. In both Malawi and South Africa, particularly in
rural sites, boys may be sent out to herd cattle at an early hour
in the morning and thus escape the daily water-carrying routine
but, as our qualitative data below indicate, this may also be a
function of perceived gender roles. The high water-carrying
burden on both boys and girls in Ghana, and on girls in partic-
ular in Malawi, is further highlighted by considering the num-
ber of water-carrying journeys made in the most recent day
when water was carried: Figure 1. Among Ghanaian girls
and boys, the modal daily trip pattern was reported to be three
journeys, with a substantial number making five or more trips,
while in South Africa it was once per day for both girls and
boys. The gender disparity inMalawi is reflected in girls report-
ing making more water-carrying trips per day (two to three)
than boys (one to two), in addition to carrying water on more
days per week.
Frequency of water-carrying also varies by age, particularly
for girls, with gender differences becoming more pronounced
among older children. Again, this is most marked in Malawi:
girls carry water increasingly frequently as they get older,
while for boys there is no increased burden with age. Thus,
by age 16–18 years, 84% of girls in Malawi reported carrying
water daily, compared to just 34% of boys, while among
7–11 year-olds the gender differences were still evident but less
pronounced (59% of girls and 27% of boys carried water dai-
ly). A similar pattern, although less marked, can be seen in
Ghana and South Africa: girls’ water-carrying duties increase
over the teenage years, while boys’ remain unchanged.
In all countries, there were substantial rural–urban differ-
ences in children’s water-carrying, and differences between
agro-ecological zones. These were most marked in Ghana,
with over 90% of children in remote rural settlements carrying
water daily, compared to just over 50% of urban children, a
highly significant effect even after controlling for other factors.
The more limited pattern of daily water carrying among chil-
dren in urban areas (particularly in South Africa) is probably
due to better availability of piped water and, in rural areas, to
availability of intermediate transport (see below). Nonetheless,
when the water pipes are dry, observation suggests water-car-
rying is regarded as a job for children. Gender also interacts
with rural–urban differences, which are greater for girls than
boys in all three countries; again, this is most marked in
Malawi where settlement type has no significant impact on
boys’ water-carrying when other factors are controlled for,
but where peri-urban and rural-dwelling girls suffer a particu-
larly high burden.
Qualitative data for Malawi support the substantial gender
differences in water-carrying identified in the survey. Many
respondents (adults and children) in Malawi told us that boys
of all ages only draw water when they want to take a bath,
whereas girls have to collect water for the house as well as
for bathing themselves. Boys reportedly refuse to carry water
and this is apparently accepted by males and females as a
reflection of “natural” gendered task differentiation. For in-
stance, in urban Malawi a 12-year-old boy talked about hating
to carry things on his head; a boys’ focus group of 12–15 year
olds was equally negative: “Drawing and head loading water is
a feminine job and parents are taking advantage of the concept
of gender equality [when] they send the boy child to draw
water.” A peri-urban fathers’ focus group observed that “we
send girls of good age [to collect water] as boys in most cases
refuse”: similar attitudes were evident across all Malawi sites.
Females are seen as natural water carriers, and not only by
men: in another peri-urban group, women observed: “some
2138 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
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girl children start crying to head-load water as early as 4 years
. . . the girl child naturally knows how to centrally head-load the
bucket while the boy head-loads poorly so that often the water
spills..”.
In Ghana’s forest zone a similar cultural message emerged:
girls are expected to carry loads such as water simply because
they are girls: “It is only girls who fetch water . . .Our culture
does not allow men to carry too much loads on their heads”
[mother, rural site], although such divisions were less evident
in Ghana’s coastal zone. Similarly, in rural Eastern Cape
(South Africa), water collection is often designated a girls’
job, unless there are no girls in the family: “the girls start col-
lecting water from an early age [from the river on the head in a
bucket]. . . The boys do fetch water [but], they use the
wheelbarrow . . .”. In rural North West Province, where water
is commonly carried by wheelbarrow or donkey-cart, boys
and men play the main transporting role. One mother de-
scribed how her family carried water in a 150 L container on
their donkey cart. Her 11-year-old son harnesses the donkey
while the girls [aged seven and 15] “just enjoy the ride and help
in filling the water into the water cans”. In urban South Africa,
where water is only collected when the house tap is dry or
there are only community taps, both girls and boys frequently
use wheelbarrows.
The qualitative data support the observation that, in Mala-
wi in particular, the gendered pattern of water-carrying be-
comes more firmly entrenched in late adolescence: “If you
see a boy aged more than 15 years head-loading . . . then you
know that he is either a fostered child or a houseboy” [rural
highlands, men’s group; see further below re fostering]. Older
boys are often embarrassed to be seen carrying water, as one
schoolteacher father observed: his daughters aged nine and
six carry water three times per day in schooldays, up to six
times per day during holidays, but his boys start refusing to
carry water from about 12 years old: “it is the time they start
to have girlfriends and they don’t want to meet their girlfriend at
the borehole” [highlands peri-urban]. Mothers also indulge
their sons: ‘Sometimes the boy-child actually tells you that“girls
will laugh at me” so as a parent you know that “now my boy-
child has grown up”’ [rural highlands, mothers’ group]. Simi-
larly, in rural Eastern Cape, South Africa, a mother reported
that her son of 20 “does not fetch water because fetching water
is a girls’ responsibility and he also claims he is too old to fetch
water”. Nonetheless, as the survey data show, some older boys
in all countries do continue to transport water, often through
force of circumstance: for example, where there are no girls in
the household or where the girls are sick: “my only sister is
away. If you want to eat you have to go and draw water” [rural
highlands Malawi, boy 18 years].
(b) Fuelwood
Fuelwood is carried less regularly than water in all sites.
Fewer than 5% of children overall reported having carried
Table 1. Reported frequency of water carrying (in week preceding survey) for girls and boys aged 7–18 years by country and settlement type: descriptive
statistics
(a) Ghana
Settlement type Girls (N = 524) Boys (N = 470)
Percentages reporting carrying water Percentages reporting carrying water
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 95.9 4.1 0 89.1 5.9 5.0
Rural/services 89.4 9.1 1.5 78.5 12.4 9.1
Peri-urban 77.5 7.7 14.8 77.2 5.4 17.4
Urban 52.0 23.7 24.3 56.6 27.3 16.2
All 76.5 12.0 11.5 75.7 11.9 12.3
(b) Malawi
Settlement type Girls (N = 536) Boys (N = 459)
Percentages reporting carrying water Percentages reporting carrying water
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 75.6 20.3 4.1 22.8 27.6 49.6
Rural/services 75.7 20.9 3.5 34.8 22.2 43.0
Peri-urban 80.0 15.0 5.0 33.3 36.1 30.6
Urban 57.6 27.2 15.2 28.1 41.6 30.3
All 71.5 21.1 7.5 29.8 30.7 39.4
(c) South Africa
Settlement type Girls (N = 554) Boys (N = 392)
Percentages reporting carrying water Percentages reporting carrying water
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 34.4 33.1 32.5 19.6 48.6 31.8
Rural/services 39.1 26.3 34.6 22.2 37.0 40.7
Peri-urban 29.6 34.3 36.1 36.4 33.0 30.7
Urban 22.4 16.0 61.5 13.5 21.3 65.2
All 31.2 26.0 41.9 22.7 35.7 41.6
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2139
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fuelwood every day in the week preceding the survey, and it
was very rare for children to make more than one journey car-
rying wood per day. However, over half of children in Ghana
and around a quarter of those in Malawi and South Africa re-
ported having carried fuelwood at least once in the preceding
week: Table 3. Moreover, loads can be extremely heavy: in
qualitative interviews children often reported firewood (along
with maize, cassava, and building materials) as the heaviest
load carried and a cause of sickness. Firewood carrying was
also the most common context in which falls were reported
(especially in Ghana), presumably because the load is so heavy
and the routes are often along narrow, difficult bush tracks.
Firewood collection may also require travel to remote loca-
tions which can bring other dangers, as a 16 year-old girl in
highland Malawi reported: “we usually go there in groups . . .we
are afraid of being raped . . . a certain mother was raped in
2001”. Similar fears are current in rural Eastern Cape: “It is
not safe for a girl to walk alone to go fetch firewood in the forest
because of the boys who hide . . .and take advantage of them”
[mother with young daughters].
Gender differences in children’s fuelwood porterage tend to
mirror those for water. The burden is highest overall in Gha-
Table 2. Multiple logistic regression analysis: predictors of carrying water every day in preceding week
(a) Ghana
Independent variables All children (N = 994) Girls (N = 524) Boys (N = 470)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.117ns (0.167) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 1.308a (0.205) 1.300a (0.276) 1.204a (0.308)
RS 1.719a (0.231) 2.437a (0.364) 1.117b (0.325)
RR 2.488a (0.312) 3.496a (0.570) 1.804a (0.402)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.412c (0.210) 0.826c (0.315) 0.273ns (0.283)
16–18 years 0.302ns (0.223) 0.782c (0.374) 0.117ns (0.328)
Zone (Ref = Forest)
Coastal 1.463a (0.182) 1.276a (0.341) 1.791a (0.278)
Constant 0.919a (0.236) 1.270a (0.341) 0.641c (0.305)
(b) Malawi
Independent variables All children (N = 995) Girls (N = 536) Boys (N = 459)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 1.945a (0.153) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 0.815a (0.209) 1.223a (0.279) 0.352ns (0.328)
RS 0.704b (0.208) 0.929b (0.282) 0.385ns (0.313)
RR 0.429c (0.207) 0.922b (0.277) 0.207ns (0.328)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.531b (0.168) 0.910a (0.221) 0.023ns (0.256)
16–18 years 0.782a (0.201) 1.386a (0.315) 0.265ns (0.283)
Zone (Ref = Blantyre)
Lilongwe 0.840a (0.146) 0.462c (0.202) 1.204a (0.216)
Constant 2.252a (0.232) 0.624c (0.237) 1.722a (0.319)
(c) South Africa
Independent variables All children (N = 946) Girls (N = 554) Boys (N = 392)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.669a (0.175) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 0.883a (0.252) 0.604ns (0.335) 1.252b (0.399)
RS 1.019a (0.245) 1.616a (0.338) 0.576ns (0.401)
RR 0.812b (0.240) 1.245a (0.317) 0.407ns (0.408)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.356ns (0.200) 0.512ns (0.304) 0.088ns (0.300)
16–18 years 0.117ns (0.224) 0.561c (0.282) 0.015ns (0.349)
Zone (Ref = GNW)
EC 2.436a (0.193) 3.307a (0.289) 1.414a (0.274)
Constant 3.736a (0.318) 4.125a (0.409) 2.605a (0.410)
a p < 0.0005.
b p < 0.005.
c p < 0.05.
ns p > 0.05.
2140 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
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na; girls carried fuelwood slightly more frequently than boys,
when controlling for other factors, but the differences are rel-
atively small and only marginally significant. In South Africa
and Malawi, fewer children overall carry fuelwood, but the
gender differences are more marked, particularly in Malawi
where 41% of girls reported having carried fuelwood at least
once in the preceding week, compared with 16% of boys. As
with water, girls’ burdens tend to increase with age in both
Malawi and South Africa (Table 4); in contrast, boys’ burdens
do not increase as they get older, and fuelwood porterage tails
off markedly for boys aged 16 plus in Malawi. Again, the
upshot is that gender differences become more pronounced
by the late teens: in Malawi, the proportions of 7–11-year-
old girls and boys reporting having carried fuelwood in the
preceding week were 37% and 19%, respectively, but by age
16–18 years, the disparities had increased substantially: 51%
for girls versus just 16% for boys.
Not surprisingly, there were marked differences in children’s
fuelwood porterage between settlements in all three countries:
Tables 3 and 4. Rural–urban differences are most marked in
Ghana, where 87% of children living in remote rural areas
had carried fuelwood in the preceding week, compared with
only 14% of their urban counterparts. In South Africa it is
extremely rare for urban children to carry fuelwood at all.
By contrast, nearly half of South African children living in re-
mote rural settlements (and more than a third of children in
remote rural settlements in Malawi) reported having carried
fuelwood in the preceding week. This mirrors patterns of
Figure 1. Numbers of water-carrying journeys made by children in the most recent day when water was carried, by gender, in (a) Ghana, (b) Malawi, and (c)
South Africa.
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2141
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household fuel use. In rural areas, the majority of households
only use wood: sole-wood-use figures for children’s house-
holds in remote rural areas are respectively Ghana 96%,
Malawi 90%, South Africa 61%, compared to 16%, 33%,
and 0% for urban households in the three countries, respec-
tively, where other fuels predominate (charcoal in Ghana
and Malawi, electricity in South Africa). Additionally, in rural
areas, wood is sometimes also collected for sale rather than
domestic use. (Such exploitation for commercial purposes of-
ten results in longer head-loading distances for girls and wo-
men when the nearby exploitable wood resources are
depleted: see Mashiri, Sarkar & Motha, 1998.) Gender inter-
acts with rural–urban differences in Malawi, as it does for
water: while boys’ burdens remain uniformly relatively low
across all settlements, the extra burden incurred in rural areas
appears to be picked up almost entirely by girls.
Turning to qualitative information, gender biases (as with
water) are strongly apparent: in a girls’ focus group in rural
central Malawi, for instance, we were told that boys only go
for firewood if the girls in the family are ill. In Ghana’s forest
zone firewood porterage is also seen as a female activity: one
male teacher from the peri-urban site observed how they all
go to the farm on Saturdays and all weed: “But on return
the females carry the food items and firewood. The females
can carry the load so there is no need for the others [i.e., males]
to carry anything”. In a remote rural hamlet a mother ob-
served that her son aged 10 may carry cassava and sometimes
carries water like her (younger) daughter, but only the girl car-
ried firewood: “In our hometown [in Ghana’s northern region] a
boy does not do the work of a woman”.
Similarly, in rural Eastern Cape (South Africa) a woman
teacher observed, “it is a norm among almost every household
that a girl child has the responsibility of collecting water and
firewood before she comes to school”. In South Africa, refer-
ences to boys moving firewood were rare and always involved
transport equipment, whether wheelbarrow, oxcart, donkey
cart, or sleigh.
(c) Other loads
Refuse usually represents a lighter load than firewood or
water, though as Grieco (2009) emphasizes (regarding urban
Accra) it may be an extremely unpleasant task, possibly
including disposal of human excrement. Girls are significantly
more likely to carry refuse than boys in both Malawi and Gha-
na. Ghana has the more pronounced gender differences: 72%
of girls reported carrying rubbish at least once in the week pre-
ceding the survey, compared with 40% of boys: Tables 5 and 6.
Moreover, as with firewood, Malawian boys’ refuse porterage
drops off markedly for those aged 16 plus; this effect is even
more markedly pronounced for boys in Ghana, while older
girls continue to carry refuse in both countries. In South Afri-
ca, fewer children overall report carrying refuse and trips ap-
pear to be fairly evenly distributed gender-wise: Table 6. In
Table 3. Reported frequency of fuelwood carrying (in week preceding survey) for girls and boys aged 7–18 years by country and settlement type: descriptive
statistics
(a) Ghana
Settlement type Girls (N = 523) Boys (N = 469)
Percentages reporting carrying fuelwood Percentages reporting carrying fuelwood
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 11.1 75.8 13.1 5.9 72.3 21.8
Rural/services 9.2 74.0 16.8 2.5 54.2 43.3
Peri-urban 0.7 48.6 50.7 3.4 53.0 43.6
Urban 2.6 10.6 86.8 3.0 12.1 84.8
All 5.4 49.1 45.5 3.6 48.8 47.5
(b) Malawi
Settlement type Girls (N = 533) Boys (N = 459)
Percentages reporting carrying fuelwood Percentages reporting carrying fuelwood
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 3.3 54.1 42.6 0.8 15.1 84.1
Rural/services 2.6 45.2 52.2 0.7 11.1 88.1
Peri-urban 11.5 33.1 55.4 2.8 13.8 83.5
Urban 8.9 12.1 79.0 3.4 16.9 79.8
All 6.9 34.3 58.7 1.7 13.9 84.3
(c) South Africa
Settlement type Girls (N = 552) Boys (N = 394)
Percentages reporting carrying fuelwood Percentages reporting carrying fuelwood
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 7.0 43.7 49.4 3.8 39.6 56.6
Rural/services 3.8 39.2 56.9 0 20.7 79.3
Peri-urban 0 10.3 89.7 2.3 8.0 89.9
Urban 0 0 100.0 0 3.4 96.6
All 2.9 23.7 73.4 1.5 19.0 79.4
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qualitative interviews, discussion of refuse carrying overall was
fairly sparse. The topic came up most frequently in urban sites,
where other loads may play a less significant role in children’s
lives (notably in Malawi, where urban boys reported in the
survey carrying refuse much more frequently than their rural
counterparts—a highly statistically significant effect). Refuse
loads tend to be relatively light, and both boys and girls are
often expected to undertake this task as a matter of course,
“he has to start now or he will not do it when he becomes an
adult” [urban Ghana]; “he must get used to doing outside work”
[urban North West Province, South Africa].
The other common major domestic load in rural Ghana and
Malawi was agricultural produce which had to be carried from
field to homestead and sometimes, in the case of maize, further
long distances to the mill for grinding. Fifty-five percentage of
children in Ghana and 43% of those in Malawi reported hav-
ing carried produce from farms to their homes at least once in
the week preceding the survey (even though the surveys were
Table 4. Multiple logistic regression analysis: predictors of carrying fuelwood all or some days in preceding week (reported)
(a) Ghana
Independent variables All children (N = 994) Girls (N = 524) Boys (N = 470)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.327c (0.150) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 1.988a (0.220) 1.875a (0.299) 2.081a (0.334)
RS 2.774a (0.234) 3.696a (0.355) 2.018a (0.341)
RR 3.465a (0.267) 4.102a (0.416) 2.976a (0.376)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.406c (0.188) 0.583ns (0.301) 0.414ns (0.262)
16–18 years 0.216ns (0.226) 0.284ns (0.362) 0.249ns (0.307)
Zone (Ref = Forest)
Coastal 0.015ns (0.151) 0.806b (0.235) 0.747a (0.215)
Constant 2.321a (0.265) 1.954a (0.362) 2.387a (0.354)
(b) Malawi
Independent variables All children (N = 995) Girls (N = 536) Boys (N = 459)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 1.449a (0.162) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 0.760a (0.217) 1.169a 0.264 0.115ns (0.371)
RS 0.701b (0.222) 1.307a 0.275 0.511ns (0.380)
RR 1.061a (0.217) 1.691a 0.272 0.250ns (0.362)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.146ns (0.170) 0.292ns (0.221) 0.082ns (0.286)
16–18 years 0.142ns (0.202) 0.752b (0.234) 0.815c (0.386)
Zone (Ref = Blantyre)
Lilongwe 0.006ns (0.148) 0.154ns (0.187) 0.139ns (0.260)
Constant 2.507a (0.246) 1.570a (0.256) 1.302a (0.339)
(c) South Africa
Independent variables All children (N = 946) Girls (N = 554) Boys (N = 392)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.571b (0.184) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 2.307a (0.631) excl 1.219ns (0.691)
RS 3.950a (0.603) excl 2.046b (0.634)
RR 4.670a (0.602) excl 3.157a (0.623)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.426c (0.212) 0.685c (0.321) 0.273ns (0.319)
16–18 years 0.330ns (0.238) 0.398ns (0.351) 0.450ns (0.364)
Zone (Ref = GNW)
EC 1.298a (0.184) 2.660a (0.228) 0.186ns (0.272)
Constant 5.934a (0.639) excl 3.536a (0.631)
[excl: Wald statistic = 0 so excluded from the model].
a p < 0.0005.
b p < 0.005.
c p < 0.05.
ns p > 0.05.
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2143
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conducted in the rainy season rather than at harvest when pro-
duce-carrying from farm to homestead or granary is likely to
be at its height): Table 7. This tends to be a job for older chil-
dren, because of the distances and, sometimes, the weights in-
volved (e.g., 50 kg sacks of maize); in all three countries, older
children carried more frequently than younger ones: Table 8.
Carrying produce from the fields seems to be widely perceived
as appropriate for boys, probably because it can be presented
as commercially-oriented (as opposed to domestic) work. In
Ghana and South Africa, boys reported more frequent jour-
neys than girls; while there was no statistically significant gen-
der difference in Malawi, this should be understood in the
context of strong female biases in other load-carrying activi-
ties: Table 8.
By contrast, carrying maize to grinding mills was seen pre-
dominantly as a girls’ job. Malawian boys were reportedly
embarrassed to be seen head-loading maize to the mill (as with
water) and often used a bicycle: “let women and girls go for
milling maize... it is their duty” [rural plains, out of school
boys, 13–18 years]. “They [parents] get you a bicycle because
boys are shy to head load on the way to the maize mill” [peri-ur-
ban highlands, boy 13 years]. Another observed that boys
aged 8–14 years are able to head load when going to the maize
mill but, “when a boy of 15 years and above thinks of head-load-
ing the general feeling is that he will lose his status in the com-
munity mostly to girls that he is eyeing for courtship”. These
observations are reflected in the survey data, where girls were
significantly more likely than boys to report transporting grain
to mills in both Ghana and Malawi: Tables 9 and 10. In Ma-
lawi, there is a sharp drop in boys doing this kind of work
when they reach their mid-teens: Table 10. In our South Afri-
can sites, such work is rarer for both boys and girls, since the
majority of domestic food loads tend to be bought-in grocer-
ies.
(d) How domestic loads are carried
In Ghana, children’s porterage is almost always done by
headloading. Over 95% of reported journeys to transport
water, fuelwood, and agricultural produce entailed headload-
ing, with very few differences between boys and girls: Table
11. Headloading also dominates in Malawi as a means for chil-
dren to transport water, fuelwood, and grain for milling (—the
limited importance of headloading in farm goods movement in
Malawi may be due to mostly very small loads being carried for
home consumption at the time of the survey, which was outside
the harvest period). However, there are gender differences:
while headloading is almost ubiquitous for girls, boys more
commonly reported carrying loads in their hands or using carts
or bicycles. In South Africa, both boys and girls make use of
nonmotorized transport, although still with gender differences:
for example, 40% of girls and 23% of boys reported headload-
ing water (most recent journey), while 35% of girls and 44% of
boys used carts or bicycles, reflecting several girls’ comments
(in interviews) that their brothers usually had first call on any
available wheelbarrow for transporting water.
Table 5. Reported frequency of refuse carrying (in week preceding survey) for girls and boys aged 7–18 years by country and settlement type: descriptive
statistics
(a) Ghana
Settlement type Girls (N = 524) Boys (N = 471)
Percentages reporting carrying refuse Percentages reporting carrying refuse
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 71.7 4.0 24.2 36.0 10.0 54.0
Rural/services 71.2 6.1 22.7 19.8 9.1 71.1
Peri-urban 58.5 4.9 36.6 27.5 11.4 61.1
Urban 52.3 19.9 27.8 29.7 18.8 51.5
All 62.4 9.4 28.2 27.8 12.1 60.1
(b) Malawi
Settlement type Girls (N = 538) Boys (N = 459)
Percentages reporting carrying refuse Percentages reporting carrying refuse
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 12.2 33.3 54.5 0.8 11.8 87.4
Rural/services 23.5 23.5 53.0 5.2 22.2 72.6
Peri-urban 28.4 24.8 46.8 15.7 22.2 62.0
Urban 22.0 25.2 52.8 23.6 28.1 48.3
All 21.7 26.6 51.7 10.0 20.5 69.5
(c) South Africa
Settlement type Girls (N = 558) Boys (N = 394)
Percentages reporting carrying refuse Percentages reporting carrying refuse
Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%) Every day (%) Some days (%) Not at all (%)
Remote rural 11.3 8.8 80.0 9.4 17.0 73.6
Rural/services 7.5 7.5 85.0 3.6 10.8 85.6
Peri-urban 11.9 12.8 75.2 8.0 22.7 69.3
Urban 5.1 19.2 75.6 3.4 23.6 73.0
All 8.8 12.2 79.0 6.1 18.0 75.9
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4. CHILDREN’S PAID LOAD-CARRYING
This section focuses on children’s paid work as porters
(whether the payment goes to them or to other family mem-
bers). We were surprised that only 9% of children in Ghana,
11% in Malawi, and 5% in South Africa reported that they
had an “occupation.” Of these, none reported their occupation
as porter (generally regarded as a very low-status occupation);
any commercial carrying they do seems to be mostly subsumed
in the category “casual labor.” Perhaps children do not feel
such work qualifies for the designation “occupation”. When
asked whether they earned money (for themselves or their
families) from head-loading, the proportions of children (both
genders) responding in the affirmative was under 5% in the
vast majority of settlements, the largest percentage being re-
ported by boys in remote rural Malawi sites (9.7%), where
charcoal-carrying predominated. However, in-depth inter-
views suggest for Malawi, in particular, that commercial
Table 6. Multiple logistic regression analysis: predictors of carrying refuse all or some days in preceding week (reported), by settlement type, agro-ecological
zone, sex, and age group
(a) Ghana
Independent variables All children (N = 994) Girls (N = 524) Boys (N = 471)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 1.332a (0.138) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 0.316ns (0.188) 0.391ns (0.254) 0.302ns (0.271)
RS 0.343ns (0.195) 0.298ns (0.282) 0.536b (0.294)
RR 0.077ns (0.188) 0.210ns (0.309) 0.326ns (0.297)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.054ns (0.177) 0.199ns (0.248) 0.118ns (0.241)
16–18 years 0.491c (0.190) 0.084ns (0.310) 1.162a (0.313)
Zone (Ref = Forest)
Coastal 0.438b (0.139) 0.283ns (0.199) 0.656b (0.201)
Constant 0.290ns (0.210) 0.671c (0.286) 0.061ns (0.207)
(b) Malawi
Independent variables All children (N = 997) Girls (N = 538) Boys (N = 459)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.661a (0.137) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 0.021ns (0.184) 0.247ns (0.233) 0.404ns (0.299)
RS 0.393c (0.187) 0.008ns (0.246) 0.930b (0.294)
RR 0.789a (0.192) 0.068ns (0.242) 1.977a (0.346)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.054ns (0.153) 0.130ns (0.195) 0.056ns (0.250)
16–18 years 0.253ns (0.184) 0.077ns (0.244) 0.629c (0.298)
Zone (Ref = Blantyre)
Lilongwe 0.332c (0.134) 0.075ns (0.175) 0.634b (0.217)
Constant 0.617b (0.193) 0.228ns (0.216) 0.133ns (0.283)
(c) South Africa
Independent variables All children (N = 952) Girls (N = 558) Boys (N = 394)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.229ns (0.161) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = urban)
PU 0.108ns ((0.223) 0.085ns (0.297) 0.188ns (0.342)
RS 0.659b (0.237) 0.515ns (0.312) 0.796c (0.365)
RR 0.097ns (0.212) 0.136ns (0.279) 0.019ns (0.330)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.164ns (0.196) 0.424ns (0.273) 0.124ns (0.288)
16–18 years 0.462c (0.209) 0.626c (0.285) 0.303ns (0.315)
Zone (Ref = GNW)
EC 0.702a (0.161) 0.830a (0.218) 0.571c (0.244)
Constant 1.543a (0.240) 2.019a (0.311) 1.321a (0.319)
a p < 0.0005.
b p < 0.005.
c p < 0.05.
ns p > 0.05.
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2145
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porterage is more important in children’s lives than the survey
data indicate. Payment was less commonly reported in Ghana
where, as a number of key informants observed, load-carrying
mostly takes place within an (unpaid) family context. In South
Africa, we encountered only one case of paid load-carrying: an
18-year-old young man in peri-urban Eastern Cape who car-
ried logs for building.
The heaviest loads commonly carried for pay in both Ghana
and Malawi included charcoal, fuelwood, farm produce, sand,
and bricks. These very heavy loads could often be transported
by cart or motor vehicle but child porterage is a cheaper op-
tion: “People here can’t afford to pay for minibus especially
when transporting loads so they employ children” [schoolboys’
focus group, urban plains Malawi]; “People can’t afford to hire
bicycles and ox cart, which are costly, they would rather hire a
child whom they will pay less” [mothers’ focus group, remote
rural plains Malawi]. In South Africa, by contrast, ownership
of nonmotorized transport is far more common, even among
quite poor populations, so that wheelbarrows and donkey-
and ox-carts commonly provide low-cost alternatives to child
labor for load-carrying.
In Malawi both out-of-school and in-school children in all
sites reported carrying loads for pay. Most often, it was boys
who reported earning money from load-carrying, because girls
were fully occupied with household chores: “[boys] have more
time and energy to carry loads” [mother, rural plains Malawi].
Earnings from load-carrying often go to the household to pay
for essentials such as food, clothes, soap, and salt: for some
children it also contributes to secondary school fees or school
requirements such as exercise books, especially in poor, rural
households. By contrast, many urban and peri-urban school-
boys in Malawi reported using the money they earned as pock-
et-money for sweets, biscuits, snacks, or to watch videos,
which some parents resented: “children may say they are doing
the piece-work in order to buy notebooks but when they get the
money . . . instead they just use the money to watch movies or
[for] buying snacks” [fathers’ focus group, Malawi plains
peri-urban]. Some boys confessed that they were involved in
the work without their parents’ knowledge, sometimes divert-
ing to the market to find a load when supposedly en-route for
school. Several parents observed how many young children
“would rather make money than spend the day in school”
[peri-urban Malawi plains], and how this eventually leads to
drop-out: “once they start earning money at a tender age,
chances of them going to school and listening to a parent is slim”
[father, rural plains Malawi]. Most such stories of children
preferring to carry loads than attend school concern boys.
To summarize the picture so far, girls and boys in all three
countries carry a variety of loads: water, fuelwood, farm pro-
duce, and refuse.Manyof these loads are very heavy and require
a substantial investment of time and effort. However, there are
important differences between and within countries, according
to gender, age, and settlement type and location. Children in
Ghana bear the highest burden in terms of transporting water,
fuelwood, and agricultural produce, mostly by headloading,
particularly those living in rural areas. However, gender differ-
ences in children’s load-carrying in Ghana are few (particularly
in coastal settlements). By contrast, Malawian children carry
fewer loads overall, but gender patterns are far more marked.
In theMalawi survey there is thus a clear tailing-off in porterage
of firewood, refuse, and grain for milling (although, interest-
ingly, not water) among boys aged 16+, while boys of this
age-group carry other agricultural loads with increasing fre-
quency, as an income-generating activity. This resonates with
earlier observations byBradley (1993) that young people’s labor
tends to be allocated to the activities with lowest returns per
hour, and with the age- and gender-disaggregated research by
Nkamleu and Kielland (2006) on child labor in Ivoirian cocoa
farms, which similarly suggests a pattern of boys moving out-
side the domestic sphere and into activities with potential for in-
come-generation as they enter their teens: as porters, these
young men will still be working in relatively low status (albeit
male, nondomestic, possibly paid) jobs—a position they may
well have to occupy for some years. InGhana and SouthAfrica,
as inMalawi, gender differentials in domestic load-carrying also
tend to increase in the mid-teens, but this is largely a function of
girls’ load-carrying duties increasing, rather than boys’ dimin-
ishing. 4 Children in our South African sites carried fewer loads
overall than their Ghanaian or Malawian counterparts, and
were more likely (especially boys) to use carts or other nonmo-
torized transport for carrying water, fuelwood and farm pro-
duce. In all three countries, head-loading for domestic
purposes is considered to be principally a girls’ task. Moreover,
wherever transport equipment is available as a substitute for
head-loading (notably in South Africa), boys commonly have
first option to access it (Flanary, 2004; Mahapa, 2000; Porter
et al., 2007). The qualitative data emphasize the reluctance of
boys over 15 years to head-load in Malawi (and the other loca-
tions to a lesser extent), unless they are carrying for money, and
widespread normative acceptance of this stance. These findings
accord with the literature that suggests that boys above about
15 years do not usually carry domestic loads (e.g., Doran,
1990, p. 30; Malmberg Calvo, 1994, p. 28; Potgieter, Pillay, &
Rama, 2006, p. 15).
5. POTENTIAL IMPACTS OF CHILDREN’S
LOAD-CARRYING ON SCHOOLING
AND EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT
The broad significance of children’s workloads for school
attendance is widely recognized (e.g., Andvig, 2001; Avotri,
Table 7. Proportions of girls and boys reporting having carried agricultural produce from farms at least once in the week preceding the survey, by country and
settlement type: descriptive statistics
Percentage of children reporting having carried produce from farm to home at least once in the week preceding the survey
Ghana Malawi South Africa
Girls (%) Boys (%) Girls (%) Boys (%) Girls (N = 556) (%) Boys (N = 392) (%)
Remote rural 67.7 83.2 67.2 64.3 18.2 28.0
Rural/services 68.9 89.3 62.6 62.2 8.4 15.7
Peri-urban 47.2 64.4 33.3 43.1 0.9 0
Urban 7.9 21.0 5.0 3.3 1.3 0
All 45.2 65.5 38.9 46.7 7.7 12.0
2146 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
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Owusu-Darko, Eghan, & Ocansey, 1999; Bass, 2004; Serra,
2009; Shimamura & Lastarria-Cornhiel, 2010). Heady
(2003), for instance, emphasizes that work outside the home
in Ghana has a substantial effect on learning achievement in
reading and mathematics, possibly caused by exhaustion or a
diversion of interest away from academic concerns. The spe-
cific impact of load-carrying on schooling and educational
achievement in Africa, however, has received little attention,
though the impact of water collection on later arrival and
tiredness in class is identified by Hemson (2007) in South
Africa, while Kielland and Tovo (2006, p. 67), drawing on
UNDP data on time spent water-carrying in a rural Benin
village (especially by girls aged 6–14 years), calculate that
within-settlement water provision could free up enough time
to almost triple school attendance rates. Linkages between
load-carrying and punctuality, truancy and poor concentra-
tion have been observed in rural Ghana (Porter et al.,
2011) while, in urban Ghana, Grieco (2009) identifies refuse
Table 8. Multiple logistic regression analysis: predictors of carrying agricultural produce all or some days in preceding week (reported), by settlement type,
agro-ecological zone, sex, age group
(a) Ghana
Independent variables All children (N = 995) Girls (N = 524) Boys (N = 471)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.924a (0.156) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = RR)
RS 0.153ns (0.232) 0.050ns (0.291) 0.505ns (0.398)
PU 1.143a (0.220) 1.218a (0.304) 1.070b (0.326)
Urban 3.222a (0.264) 3.517a (0.393) 2.963a (0.369)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 0.475c (0.190) 0.618c (0.259) 0.303ns (0.290)
16–18 years 0.725b (0.237) 0.935c (0.339) 0.470ns (0.341)
Zone (Ref = Forest)
Coastal 0.210ns (0.157) 0.265ns (0.210) 0.119ns (0.238)
Constant 1.458a (0.236) 0.567c (0.276) 1.458a (0.356)
(b) Malawi
Independent variables All children (N = 997) Girls (N = 537) Boys (N = 460)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.127ns (0.161) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = RR)
RS 0.258ns (0.201) 0.205ns (0.288) 0.338ns (0.284)
PU 1.386a (0.204) 1.514a (0.280) 1.277a (0.304)
Urban 4.106a (0.351) 3.969a (0.427) 4.287a (0.635)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 1.395a (0.185) 1.386a (0.251) 1.399a (0.277)
16–18 years 1.894a (0.222) 1.500a (0.315) 2.217a (0.322)
Zone (Ref = Blantyre)
Lilongwe 0.355c (0.160) 0.037ns (0.222) 0.673b (0.234)
Constant 0.144ns (0.201) 0.096ns (0.262) 0.086ns (0.265)
(c) South Africa
Independent variables All children (N = 948) Girls (N = 556) Boys (N = 392)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.623c (0.272) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = RR)
RS 1.065a (0.289) 1.171b (0.425) 1.003c (0.398)
PU 4.634a (1.025) 3.631a (1.042) [Excl]
Urban 4.064a (0.739) 3.440a (0.762) [Excl]
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–15 years 1.259b (0.362) 1.623b (0.556 0.943ns (0.485)
16–18 years 1.356a (0.388) 1.322c (0.587) 1.520b (0.534)
Zone (Ref = GNW)
EC 3.111a (0.414) 3.646a (0.743) 2.769a (0.514)
Constant 3.891a (0.490) 5.194a (0.849) 3.468a (0.586)
a p < 0.0005.
b p < 0.005.
c p < 0.05.
ns p > 0.05.
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2147
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removal as another significant load-carrying task commonly
performed before school, which may contribute further to de-
layed attendance.
The current study has enabled us to chart educational im-
pacts of load-carrying across diverse research sites. Impacts
were found in five main areas:
(a) Contribution to school fees and other schooling costs
from paid porterage
As noted above, for some of the poorest children, money
earned from commercial head-loading is essential for access
to schooling, even if (primary) education is supposedly free:
Table 10. Multiple logistic regression analysis: predictors of carrying grain to mill all or some days in preceding week (reported), by settlement type, agro-
ecological zone, sex, age group
(a) Ghana
Independent variables All children (N = 995) Girls (N = 523) Boys (N = 471)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.966a (0.148) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = RR)
RS 0.521c (0.212) 0.332ns (0.280) 0.911c (0.340)
PU 0.490c (0.209) 0.643c (0.293) 0.464ns (0.310)
Urban 0.902a (0.220) 0.941b (0.288) 0.974c (0.358)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–14 years 0.313ns (0.178) 0.496c (0.236) 0.170ns (0.280)
15–18 years 0.096ns (0.222) 0.062ns (0.301) 0.120ns (0.335)
Zone (Ref = Forest)
Coastal 1.363a (0.152) 1.077a (0.189) 1.833a (0.269)
Constant 0.204ns (0.214) 0.500ns (0.265) 0.115ns (0.319)
(b) Malawi
Independent variables All children (N = 994) Girls (N = 536) Boys (N = 458)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.932a (0.137) N/A N/A
Settlement type (REF = RR)
RS 0.010ns (0.188) 0.378ns (0.266) 0.299ns (0.287)
PU 0.114ns (0.187) 0.060ns (0.249) 0.471ns (0.287)
Urban 0.279ns (0.189) 0.316ns (0.243) 0.182ns (0.308)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–14 years 0.270ns (0.151) 0.340ns (0.197) 0.144ns (0.233)
15–18 years 0.336ns (0.185) 0.332ns (0.248) 1.312a (0.323)
Zone (Ref = Blantyre)
Lilongwe 0.041ns (0.134) 0.160ns (0.176) 0.391ns (0.215)
Constant 0.803a (0.186) 0.160ns (0.235) 0.428ns (0.251)
a p < 0.0005.
b p < 0.005.
c p < 0.05.
ns p > 0.05.
Table 9. Proportions of girls and boys reporting having carried grain to grinding mills at least once in the week preceding the survey, by country and settlement
type: descriptive statistics
Percentage of children reporting having carried produce from farm to home at least once in the week preceding the survey
Ghana Malawi South Africa
Girls (N = 523) (%) Boys (N = 471) (%) Girls (N = 536) (%) Boys (N = 458) (%)q Girls (N = 556) (%) Boys (N = 394) (%)
Remote rural 52.6 31.7 53.7 32.3 6.3 8.5
Rural/services 47.0 20.0 62.6 23.9 1.5 2.7
Peri-urban 42.0 30.2 51.8 38.9 0.9 0
Urban 34.4 19.8 45.9 29.2 0 1.1
All 43.0 25.7 52.8 30.8 2.3 3.3
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for uniform, exercise books, PTA dues, even soap (to wash the
uniform). The story told by a 15 year-old boy in peri-urban
coastal Ghana is not untypical in illustrating associated nega-
tive impacts. It also highlights the temptation to carry danger-
ously heavy loads when money is urgently needed.
Last Christmas I went to carry sand to get some money. I wanted to get
more money so I increased the load per each trip. After the job, I suffered
from back and neck pains . . . I used the money to buy books and clothes.
(b) Late arrival at school
Many children are required to carry loads before school
(particularly water) or on their journey to school (e.g., grain
for grinding). This delays arrival so that classes are missed:
consequent punishments include beatings and exclusion from
class. Such lateness is especially prevalent in Ghana: in the sur-
vey 33% of girls and 33% of boys (compared to 8% of girls and
3% of boys in Malawi) reported being late at least one day the
previous week because of fetching water. Qualitative data sug-
gest that girls are often disproportionately affected because
pre-school work is predominantly composed of “female”
domestic chores. In rural and urban Malawi, teachers and
children referred to water and firewood collection and jour-
neys to the maize mill as a common cause of lateness, espe-
cially for girls. Some girls (12–15 years) interviewed in one
village were particularly upset at being required to do these
jobs during school examinations. Lateness is also common
among boys, though in Malawi and South Africa this is more
often because of herding duties than load-carrying. In coastal
and forest Ghana, children are often required to help carry
loads to market before school:
children have to help their parents to the market by carrying foodstuffs in
the morning. This activity delays children and they get to school tired.
That is a peculiar [sic] problem with girls. . . .They just join the day’s les-
son midway and they cannot catch up with their colleagues . . . [male tea-
cher, rural coastal site].
Some children get up extremely early to avoid being late for
school. One mother in urban coastal Ghana reported how she
wakes her two foster daughters (aged 11 and 13) between 4.30
and 5 a.m. to start their chores, notably carrying firewood and
water, so they are never late for school. Poor punctuality com-
monly leads to severe punishment: the primary headmaster of
a rural school in lowlandMalawi, for instance, observed a range
of punishments for lateness applied in his school such as clean-
ing lavatories and sweeping. However, if children arrive after
8am they are sent back home. He observed, unsurprisingly,
“Such children fail to perform well in class”.
(c) Absence from school
Given the prospect of punishments for late arrival at school,
many boys, in particular, admitted to taking the day off, if
they are late:
on market days I don’t usually like coming to school . . .This is because
after finishing my usual household chores, I have to carry my mother’s
wares to the market by which time I will be late to school. So I don’t usu-
ally come because when you are late you are lashed [primary boy
14 years, rural coastal Ghana].
Where loads have to be carried a long distance, there may be
no possibility of attending school. In rural highland Malawi it
was observed that the “child who goes to the maize mill will be
absent from school that particular day because s/he cannot man-
age to go to the maize mill and still have time to go to school”
[Men’s group]. In Malawi, maize is carried principally by girls,
as noted above. Moreover, some teachers reflected that, when
the load is extremely heavy, the child may simply be too ex-
hausted or ill to attend school next day. One boy in Ghana’s
rural forest zone was reportedly so ill after carrying a heavy
load of maize home from the farm (as required by his father)
that he was unable to attend school for a week. However, as
observed earlier, some young boys in Malawi find the earnings
from commercial load-carrying so attractive that they prefer
to deceive their parents and play truant.
(d) School drop-out
For some boys, the attractions of the proceeds obtainable
from porterage are such that they drop out of school
altogether, as boys in Malawi recounted:“[porterage]
Table 11. Means of porterage
Chi2 tests: [Ghana and Malawi: head versus other means  sex for each type of load (1 df). South Africa: sex  all means for each load (2 df)].
No shading: not significant; light shading: p < 0.05; dark shading: p < 0.005.
aNumbers of South African children transporting grain to mill were very small (13 girls, 12 boys).
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2149
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impacted negatively on my schooling because . . . I was so much
involved in these tasks at the expense of my education. I was
busy looking for money . . . [and] the fear of being punished
was an excuse for absenteeism” [life history, 22 year-old man,
peri-urban highlands]. In Ghana similar situations arose and
a teacher observed how, as boys in his (rural coastal) village
became involved in commercial carrying of farm produce
and building materials, “the problem becomes more prominent
because of their exposure to money paid them after carrying
the things”. In other cases the effort of trying to combine heavy
work and school is simply too much to bear. Constant punish-
ment for late arrival and difficulties of keeping up with other
pupils when they miss morning classes encourages drop-out.
A 17 year old boy in rural highland Malawi recounted how
he dropped out of school because he was
constantly being sent to the maize mill and whenever I came back my legs
were sore. It was therefore hard for me to go back to school. [Moreover]
every time I went back to school I could find my [mates] well ahead of
me. They had covered lots of topics and it was not easy for me to catch
up. . . .My sisters [14 and 8 years] . . . do not go to school because they
were being asked to go to the maize mill whenever I said I was tired. They
would come back with aching legs and they were eventually forced out of
school
(e) Exhaustion affecting concentration and performance
Whether or not children manage to get to school on time
after head-loading, they may suffer from exhaustion which
affects concentration and academic performance. This was
observed wherever loads are substantial, in all three
countries:
[Head porterage, common especially in the evenings] affects the concen-
tration of children in school the following day. Right from primary class
1, children are made to get involved in some kind of head loading but it is
more common among the girls. [urban coastal Ghana, female primary
teacher].
When children are sent to fetch firewood before school they usually come
to school late or do not come to school at all . . . fetching water and fire-
wood make pupils feel tired and they lose concentration in class. This and
lateness eventually result in children’s poor performance [peri-urban
highland Malawi, male secondary school teacher].
If I didn’t do most of these activities [fetching water and firewood,
cooking, cleaning the house, laundering at the river] I would probably
have time to do my school work and study my books but by the time I
start doing my homework I’m already tired and I want to sleep [rural
Eastern Cape, 17 year-old girl, eldest of three children].
Not everyone agreed that head-loading impacts on educa-
tion were substantial. Many parents emphasized that it only
took place after school or at weekends or in the holidays or
that, despite the morning load-carrying tasks, their children al-
ways got to school on time: “by 6 am the maize mill is already
open. That gives my children [daughter 12, son nine] ample time
to go . . .and get to school in good time” [mother, urban high-
land Malawi]. A woman in coastal Ghana with two foster
daughters observed that “porterage also benefits the children
. . . it is a form of training for them to be hardworking now for
the future”. In lowland rural Malawi, several parents argued
that carrying domestic loads benefited their children: “They
get knowledge about how to work [and] . . . it makes them
strong” (though this mother also acknowledged that if the
load-carrying and other work were less she would send her
children to school more regularly). Clearly, much depends
on specific conditions experienced by individual children, but
the overall conclusions are not encouraging.
6. IMPACTS OF CHILDREN’S LOAD-CARRYING
ON HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
Most adults interviewed were sanguine about the health and
well-being impacts of children’s load-carrying; occasionally
head-loading was even presented as beneficial to health. A
23-year-old woman, for instance, observed:
when coming to collect firewood and from the maize mill [in childhood]
then I demanded that they should give me more of the load because I did
not want to be seen and treated as a baby or just a small child . . . [so] I
can carry very heavy loads now that I am on my own. My bones became
strong [Malawi highlands PU, life history].
The potential value of load-carrying for bone density is an
important point, but this woman’s health history also includes
persistent headaches since childhood. In one remote rural site
in Malawi, women told the sad story of an under-fed boy’s
death following excessive load-carrying (70 kg charcoal), and
a few other references were made to potential health problems:
“it makes them not to grow well [prompt] because as young ones
their bones become compressed due to heavy loads, they end up
having a stunted growth” [mother 48 years, remote rural plains
Malawi]. “it makes them to become strong but a child [who]
carries more load than his/her weight, the child doesn’t usually
grow well” [father 30 years, urban plains Malawi]. Most
adults, however—men and women—seem to see load-carrying
as simply a natural job for females.
In a southern Ghana study (Porter et al., 2011) rural parents
explained how load weight is increased as the child grows old-
er and stronger: a boy or girl of 4–5 years can carry half a rub-
ber of maize (4 kg); at 8 years 8 kg; at 10 years 16–20 kg. By
15 years girls are expected to be able to carry a full adult load
(40–70 kg), whereas boys are thought to mature later. We met
this load-for-age concept in interviews with children too. In
Malawi a 9-year-old primary-school girl observed, “when I
go to collect firewood I try to carry an amount that is equivalent
to my age” [prompt] . . . if I have carried too much then it is
20 kg and if too little it weighs 10 kg”. [peri-urban, highlands].
From a Western perspective, such loads seem enormous, but
clear identification of impacts on current and future health is
difficult because sound medical evidence is sparse (although,
for instance, a WaterAid pamphlet in 1996 suggested that
water loads have especially serious implications for girls, nota-
bly damage to head, neck, and spine; see also Geere, Hunter,
& Jagals, 2010; Geere, Mokoena, Jagals, Poland, & Hartley,
2010). Detailed research is needed to answer important ques-
tions regarding whether, when and how the load-carrying we
have documented translates into long-term bodily damage
(or advantage, i.e., in terms of improved bone density).
In our survey we asked children whether they had experi-
enced any problems from carrying heavy loads, with particular
reference to the previous week. Overall, two-thirds of girls and
boys said that they had experienced pain (headache, neckache,
or “waist-pain”) in the preceding week as a direct result of
load-carrying: Table 12. A further 4.6% of children, overall,
mentioned tiredness as a problematic consequence of their
load-carrying activities.
Clearly, this is a complex topic because pain is such a sub-
jective issue; however, these figures suggest this is an area
where further (medical) investigation is required, especially
in Ghana where figures are particularly high. Not surprisingly,
more pain was reported in rural areas (over 80% overall),
where load-carrying is most widespread. This is reflected in
high rates of self-medication for work-induced pain reported
by children in our Ghana field-sites (Hampshire, Porter, Owu-
su, Tanle, & Abane, 2011). In Malawi the reports of pain are
lower overall, but still over 30% of boys and nearly 40% of
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girls reported pains incurred from load-carrying, again with
the highest proportions in rural areas. The substantially lower
level of reported pain by children in the GNW sites in South
Africa reflects the overall lower levels of load-carrying in that
area; however, in Eastern Cape, where loads are carried much
more frequently, 33% of girls and 21% of boys reported asso-
ciated pains. In both Malawi and South Africa, the gender dif-
ferences in reported pain were statistically significant, even
when controlling for other factors (Table 13). Age does not
appear to be associated with reported pain, even though, as
we have seen, patterns of some load-carrying activities vary
by age.
Interestingly, pain and negative health impacts from carry-
ing emerged as a far stronger theme in in-depth discussions
with boys than with girls, who tend to simply refer in passing
to headache, neckache, backache, or “waist-pain” from carry-
ing (to which they also occasionally attribute bouts of malar-
ia). The following stories from men and boys are not
untypical. A Ghanaian man of 30 observed that as young child
he “fetched water, carried cassava and plantain... I believe that
is what led to the constant headaches I was experiencing and still
experience. I believe if I had not stopped it might have ended in
my death” [Peri-urban forest zone]. Another story of extreme
pain came from a 15 year-old boy in peri-urban highlands Ma-
lawi:
We buy fertilizer . . . and I carry 50 kg . . . I had a critical health problem
from carrying fertilizer this year . . . in the night as I was sleeping I
started feeling pain in myneck . . .we went to the health centre where they
established I had sprained one of my nerves and they sedated me with
anaesthetic and straightened my neck back.
An 18 year-old boy in peri-urban Ghana observed how the
weight of the foodstuffs brought neck and back pains: “You
can notice people who cannot turn the head even through 90
degrees”. Another boy of the same age in rural Malawi lik-
ened the commercial work he does carrying charcoal to slave
trade.
Why it should be that boys emphasize pain more in inter-
views, while the survey data suggest that girls are more likely
to experience load-carrying induced pain, is unclear. Perhaps
the emphasis on load-carrying as an essential skill for females
in most sites encourages girls to make a more careful assess-
ment of load weight as they carry domestic loads—what Jack-
son (1997) refers to as building up “body capital”—whereas
boys, by contrast, take less care, especially when they are earn-
ing money for carrying. But girls also, perhaps, are simply
Table 13. Multiple logistic regression analysis of reported pain from load-carrying in Ghana, Malawi, and South Africa
Independent variables Ghana (N = 971) Malawi (N = 917) South Africa (N = 929)
B (Std Error) B (Std Error) B (Std Error)
Sex (REF = male)
Female 0.078ns (0.149) 0.414b (0.145) 0.713b (0.216)
Settlement type (REF = urban)
RR 1.447a (0.235) 0.806a (0.205) 2.043a (0.324)
RS 1.424a (0.214) 0.784a (0.205) 1.479a (0.335)
PU 0.651a (0.185) 0.393ns (0.206) 0.579ns (0.375)
Age group (Ref = 7–11 years)
12–14 years 0.233ns (0.191) 0.182ns (0.162) 0.306ns (0.249)
15–18 years 0.256ns (0.227) 0.091ns (0.195) 0.345ns (0.272)
Zone (Ref = Forest)
Coastal 0.535a (0.149) 0.269ns (0.142) 2.453a (0.216)
Constant 0.076ns (0.221) 1.319a (0.218) 5.239a (0.448)
a p < 0.0005.
b p < 0.005.
c p < 0.05.
ns p > 0.05.
Table 12. Reported physical pains incurred from load-carrying in week preceding the survey
% Reporting any pain (headache, neck pain, waist-pains) resulting from load-carrying in preceding week
Ghana Malawi South Africa
Girls (N = 513)
(%)
Boys
(N = 458) (%)
Girls
(N = 520) (%)
Boys
(N = 397) (%)
Girls
(N = 540) (%)
Boys
(N = 389) (%)
All 69.6 72.1 38.3 31.2 18.1 11.8
By settlement type
RR 85.0 82.0 45.0 38.6 30.5 20.0
RS 85.6 78.8 44.1 37.9 22.3 12.8
PU 66.4 67.1 36.2 27.8 10.4 9.2
U 46.8 60.6 30.5 16.9 7.8 3.4
By age group
7–11 years 77.3 74.5 39.3 24.8 14.2 11.5
12–15 years 68.8 72.4 38.8 33.9 19.0 12.7
16–18 years 62.0 68.9 35.0 34.3 20.8 10.8
By agro-ecological zone
Forest/Blan/GNW 64.7 65.4 43.9 30.8 4.3 3.5
Coast/Lilong/EC 74.2 79.4 33.6 31.7 33.3 20.6
CHILD PORTERAGE AND AFRICA’S TRANSPORT GAP 2151
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raised expecting to suffer to some degree, since load-carrying is
an integral element of being female.
In this paper, we have focused particularly on analysis of
load-carrying frequency and impacts by gender, age, and set-
tlement type/location, since these were the most prominent
factors to emerge in the analysis of both qualitative and quan-
titative data. However, it is worth making brief mention of
other factors that can come into play. For example, household
context may also influence load-carrying practice. When we
asked about excessive loads, parents and children tended to re-
fer in particular to poor (women-headed) households and,
above all, to fostered children, particularly in Ghana: “those
who are fostered carry more load to get money than those who
stay with their own parents because most of their needs are
not catered for “[coastal zone peri-urban focus group, out-
of-school boys 15–19]. An 18-year-old unemployed boy sug-
gested, “Sometimes . . . commercial carriers tend to be foster
children who will have to do so to help meet ends . . .[such] as
exercise books or meals at schools” [peri-urban coastal Ghana].
In many cases children are fostered specifically to assist with
chores and sometimes it was observed (by these children and
others in their communities) that they took the largest burden
of load-carrying, even where there were other resident chil-
dren, supporting earlier work in southern Ghana (Porter et
al., 2011)—a load perhaps “beyond their age” in terms of
head-loading, as in many other domestic duties (Bledsoe &
Brandon, 1992; Kielland & Tovo, 2006, pp. 31–34). However,
analysis of the survey data suggests a rather more ambiguous
relationship between fostering and load-carrying, an issue we
explore in depth elsewhere (Hampshire et al., submitted for
publication).
7. CONCLUSION: REVIEW AND PROSPECT
Although there are differences in patterns of head-loading
between and within our three study countries, relating to gen-
der, age, and settlement type, load-carrying in many locations
across Africa is clearly essential for household production and
reproduction. From a careful review of qualitative and survey
evidence, we conclude that it may substantially damage chil-
dren’s current lives and future life chances. Our data suggest
that many boys and girls experience considerable disadvantage
as a result of the part they are expected to play in filling Africa’s
transport gap, whether their load-carrying work is for domestic
or commercial purposes. Domestic load-carrying may have a
particularly strong impact on education, because many tasks
such as water collection are required to commence early in
the morning prior to school, affecting punctuality, concentra-
tion, etc. The impacts of domestic load-carrying on health
and well-being are more difficult to ascertain, partly because
the subjective experience of pain may be mediated by cultural
(gendered) expectations. However, the high proportions of
children reporting pain as a direct result of load-carrying
clearly indicate the need for further (medical) research. Com-
mercial carrying in many sites is dominated by boys (since girls’
time is commonly limited by domestic demands) and may have
severe impacts on both their education and health, in the case
of education leading to truancy and early drop-out and in the
case of health and well-being to overloading, pain and possible
long-term injury. While the impacts of load-carrying on formal
education and immediate well-being (pain/discomfort) are
mostly clearly negative, the impacts on longer-term health
are essentially unknown, underscoring the need for a program
of health-focused research on children’s headloading.
Our conclusion brings to the fore some reflections regarding
possible constraints on the continent’s likely developmental
potential if current load-carrying patterns persist. Our data
suggest that many of today’s children may reach adulthood
substantially disadvantaged in terms of their educational
attainment and possibly also with long-term physical impair-
ment associated with load-carrying, as we heard in some life
histories of men and women in their twenties: persistent head-
aches, waist-pain, restricted neck movement, etc. (see also
Avotri & Walters, 1999). These disadvantages must inevitably
impact on productivity, livelihoods, and life chances. More-
over, the lower status of females of all ages, which remains
characteristic of many African societies, is reflected in and
arguably reinforced by their continued assignment as domestic
beasts of burden. Given the strongly gendered pattern of load-
carrying in adult populations, gender not surprisingly emerges
as a key component of difference among children, especially as
they move into their teens. This is evident not only in terms of
load-carrying activity per se, but also regarding whether this
work is remunerated or not.
However, this study also indicates some interventions
which could help reduce the transport gap or at least ame-
liorate the role which children currently play in filling it.
Sensitization of adults may have significant impact on chil-
dren’s porterage work, especially in commercial contexts
where there are increasing pressures toward corporate social
responsibility. A learning exercise introduced through the
International Institute for Tropical Agriculture’s Sustainable
Tree Crop Programme in its Farmer Field School curricu-
lum in Ghana in 2003, to reduce this and other child labor
hazards on cocoa farms, reportedly had statistically signifi-
cant impact on carrying of heavy loads among children
(notably 12–14 year olds) (International Institute of Tropical
Agriculture (IITA), 2006). The remediation activities of the
International Cocoa Initiative in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire
are also impressive (almost 88% reduction in the number
of children carrying heavy loads in nine Ghanaian commu-
nities and almost 84% in 22 Ivoirian communities moni-
tored) (Tulane University, 2011), though whether loads
were redistributed to other people or to means of transport
in these contexts is unclear. This latter point is important: if
child porterage is simply banned, it is likely that in poor
families dependent on such income women will be expected
to fill the gap, when most are already time-poor: this may
not only increase their work burden but also arguably fur-
ther reduce their status, since porterage is among the very
lowest status tasks in the livelihoods repertoire.
Legislation without accompanying sensitization is also unli-
kely to have impact, especially where reference is simply made
to “heavy loads”; from this perspective it is noteworthy that
Government of Ghana legislation (Ministry of Manpower,
Youth and Employment, Hazardous child labor activity frame-
work, June 2008) now requires that children under 18 years
working in the cocoa industry do not carry more than 30%
of their body weight for more than two miles (3 km) (Tulane
University, 2010). Ensuring the implementation of such legisla-
tion, however, will be difficult, especially in remote rural areas.
Moreover, widespread implementation of legislation restricting
commercial load-carrying by children (or other interventions
to reduce its prevalence) could have repercussions for the very
poorest families, among whom porterage is often a key income
source. Consequently, where such interventions are made it will
be essential to ensure that other (less damaging) income sources
are made available to those families which would otherwise suf-
fer severe income loss. As noted above, moreover, simple reas-
signment of commercial loads from children to women is not a
satisfactory solution, given its implications for women’s status
and (often already excessive) work-burden.
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Author's personal copy
Part of the solution to the domestic load-carrying problem is
likely to include improving domestic water supplies, as Kiel-
land and Tovo (2006, p.69) advocate, given that water-carry-
ing dominates domestic load-carrying work. Accessible
woodlots could also do much to reduce fuelwood carrying in
rural areas (a common cause of accidents and one of the heavi-
est loads). As with all development initiatives, however, these
interventions need careful planning within a broader multisec-
toral development program, to avoid unexpected adverse im-
pacts, a point emphasized by Gibson and Mace (2006) in
their analysis of a water intervention in rural Ethiopia. 5
For other loads, such as agricultural produce, low-cost
transport is required, whether motorized or nonmotorized.
However, resistance to IMTs (Intermediate Means of Trans-
port, often perceived as technologically backward), is wide-
spread in Africa (e.g., IT Transport Ltd., 1996 re Zambia;
Tengey, Glyde, & Kwashie, 1999 re Ghana). Resistance to ani-
mal-drawn vehicles in those regions with no tradition of live-
stock-keeping is particularly strong. At the same time, in an
increasingly carbon-constrained world and rapidly rising oil
prices, it appears unlikely that cheap oil-fueled motor trans-
port will offer a widespread alternative. Perhaps solar-powered
vehicles will provide part of the solution in the very long-term,
but in the near future it would be unrealistic to imagine that
the need for human-power will disappear. One possibility
may be to focus more on production of very simple, cheap
forms of IMT such as wheelbarrows and push trucks, which
can be operated by adults and children alike: in southern Gha-
na a small IMT action research project, for example, showed
that the introduction of push trucks encouraged young boys
to take over some water and firewood transport from their sis-
ters and mothers (Porter, Blaufuss, & Owusu Acheampong,
2012): even 20 months after the intervention they perceived
operating the trucks as play, not work. Although IMT inter-
ventions are often captured by men, redistribution of load-car-
rying work along these lines could substantially reduce female
time-poverty in many locations (as is evident in some of our
South African sites) and in the longer term might contribute
to redressing gender inequalities. IMT seems to have gone
out of fashion recently among donors: perhaps, given the ex-
tent to which child load-carrying currently fills the transport
gap, and the breadth and depth of the implications this has
for children’s lives and life chances, a reassessment of IMT
developmental potential is required.
To conclude, there is a widespread tendency in the develop-
ment community to underestimate the significance of trans-
port—as absence of transport-related parameters from the
MDGs reflects—but, as we have illustrated in this paper with
reference to child porterage, its inter-sectoral connections are
remarkably pervasive and its developmental implications sub-
stantial, in many diverse locations, rural and urban. While
children’s burden of load-carrying is only one part of the wider
developmental problem associated with Africa’s transport
gap, it has far-reaching significance for the human develop-
ment of the continent. Concerted efforts are needed to bring
together the diversity of interventions required to address
what is arguably one of Africa’s most significant, yet least rec-
ognized, development constraints.
NOTES
1. Throughout the paper wherever we refer to load-carrying we are
concerned with head-loading (which is the main form of pedestrian load-
carrying), unless we state otherwise.
2. The age break-down (not gender-disaggregated) is as follows: in Cote
d’Ivoire 77.5% of 5–11 year olds, 81.5% of 12–14 year-olds, and 83.5% of
15–17 year olds (n = 658) involved in cocoa work carried heavy loads,
compared to 27.2%, 53.5%, and 52.8%, respectively (n = 2,165) living in
agricultural households (including nonworking children). Respective
figures for young Ghana cocoa workers (by age group) were 67.4%,
70.1%, 70.1% (n = 1,000) and in agricultural households 34.9%, 61.2%,
61.1% (n = 2,074) (Tulane university, 2009).
3. The commonest head loads were cassava, maize, fuel wood, vegeta-
bles, and charcoal. In addition, girls and young boys head-loaded many
water loads every day between the water points and their homes; these
went unrecorded because the weighing points were located to capture farm
and market traffic rather than domestic loads.
4. Eighteen-year-old boys (but not 16–17-year-olds) in Ghana did appear
to have a reduced frequency of water-carrying, so it may be simply that the
age at which boys assume men’s work activities is higher in Ghana than
Malawi; however, the numbers of boys aged 18 are too small in each
settlement to test this effect statistically.
5. A World Bank project to aid female fuelwood porters in Ethiopia thus
focused not only on improving working conditions but also developing
agro-forestry and alternative income sources for women http://go.world-
bank.org/S9UF4PDRN0. However, the project only refers to girls aged
16 years and over, whereas many younger girls also appear to work as
carriers. Gibson and Mace’s (2006) study in an Ethiopian village
community found that village taps introduced to reduce the time and
energy that women spent carrying water was associated with an increase in
birth rates and decreased mortality, with consequences for family size
which they suggested could increase childhood malnutrition. They do not
refer to impacts on child labor in the paper.
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