More than 2,000 children aged 10 to 14 are working as mobile traders across Ghana, with girls making up the overwhelming majority, according to data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) released as part of the 2024 Integrated Business Establishment Survey Phase I (IBES I).
Of the 82,920 mobile business operators counted nationwide, 2,087 fall within the 10 to 14 age bracket, and girls account for roughly 80 percent of that group. Most of these young operators do not own the goods they sell, a detail that underlines their economic vulnerability and raises questions about who ultimately benefits from their labour.
The survey, the first of its kind to formally enumerate mobile businesses such as hawkers, porters, and traders operating from vehicles, carts, and wheelbarrows, captured a category of workers that has long been economically active but largely invisible in official data.
Analysts have pointed to household poverty as the root driver, noting that children’s economic contributions to family income often become a necessity rather than a choice, and that data alone will not resolve that structural reality.
The findings arrive against the backdrop of Ghana’s Children’s Act, which sets the minimum working age at 15 and prohibits hazardous child labour. Street trading, with its exposure to traffic, weather, and predatory adults, routinely tests both conditions. Enforcement, however, has remained inconsistent across urban and peri-urban areas where mobile traders are most concentrated.
The GSS noted that informal businesses provide widespread employment and extend market access to goods across communities, but they remain exposed to financing gaps, poor physical infrastructure, and inadequate social protection, with the child labour data confirming the last of these gaps most sharply.
The IBES I findings are expected to feed into a second survey phase that will gather more detailed operational data on selected businesses. Child welfare advocates are calling on the Ministry of Labour, Jobs and Employment (MoLJE) and the Department of Social Welfare to treat the child trader figures as an actionable threshold, not a footnote.
