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As Sub-Saharan Africa strives to break the shackles of poverty, its population of nearly one billion people is hard at work. A 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Labor concluded that one out of five Sub-Saharan children are working under difficult if not squalid conditions. In a skype interview for South Africa, the International Labor Organization's says Alex Soho said, poverty is the driving force behind child labor. "They are poor. Their income is low. They cannot afford hiring adult laborers,” he said. ”So they have to rely, you know, on the work of their kids. This is true for farmers. This is true, also, for farm workers, who have to take them [children] along with them to the plantations, in particular, the whole family, to complete the tasks they've been assigned." For these children, daily life consists of more than just backbreaking labor. Hazardous conditions are commonplace — not just on the farms, where pesticides abound and machinery meant to be run by adults poses threats to children, but also in mining, where conditions are sometimes abominable. Day after day, children stand in muddy creeks and rivers scouring the water for specks of gold dust. There are dangers everywhere — machinery, man-sized or bigger rocks, hazardous chemicals and water-borne diseases. Cocoa industry Another Sub-Saharan African industry dependent on child labor is cocoa, used in the production of chocolate. The U.S. Labor Department report said child labor is prevalent on cocoa plantations in Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea and Sierra Leone. In two other nations — Ivory Coast and Nigeria — it's not only that children are working; it’s that they are being forced to work. | 
