In Ghana, West Africa a little over $180 was handed over to the mother of a child and the deal was sealed a child of 3 had just been pawned by his parents to a local fisherman to be used as a diver in the Volta river to arrange fishing nets to facilitate heavy catches. It is estimated that until the practice came to light and exposed, at least 10 children were sold each day by poor parents to fishermen or anybody who was interested in buying them. These children, including some who were only three years old were sold into virtual slave labour for as much as US $180 and as little as $5 in extreme cases. the children was given out by their parents to work virtually as slaves for others in order for their parents to earn money. Ernest Taylor, the project coordinator, said the 1,203 children being reunited with their families represented a small fraction of the Ghanaian children sold by their parents into virtual slavery. Most are boys aged between 3 and 14 who are forced to work long hours casting and drawing nets. They are poorly fed and never paid. Sometimes, they drown in their attempts to retrieve nets caught on tree stumps at the bottom of the lake. The children that have not been sold into slavery to be used by other but have been forced by the economic situations at home to make a livelihood along the coast where they help mend nets and pull catches to the shore.

They said in an AP news report last year reported that some 15,000 Benin children work in Nigerian granite pits cracking stones. 116 have been returned to their homes, some unfortunately have died there.
An analysis into the background of the children show that they come from very poor backgrounds and were sold off when their parents could not afford keeping them around. This crude form of adoption was, perhaps to the parents, the only means by which they-parents and other sibling and the children involved could.
They also said In our part of the world, where the rule is, “survival by all means necessary’, the abuse of the rights of the child is a simple issue of survival. Faced with the harsh realities of poverty parents, institutions and governments have virtually thrown overboard almost all the rights of the African child outlined in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.