The Twin Challenges of Eliminating Child Labour and Achieving EFA : Evidence and Policy Options from Mali and Zambia

Child labour constitutes a key obstacle to achieving Education For All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals in Mali and Zambia. It not only harms the welfare of individual children, but also slows broader national poverty reduction and development efforts. Children forced out of school and into labour to help their families make ends meet are denied the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed for gainful future employment, thereby perpetuating the cycle of poverty. One out of every two Malian and Zambian children aged 7-14 years work regularly in economic activity, underscoring the scale of the challenge posed by child labour in the two countries. Understanding the interplay between educational marginalisation and child labour is critical to achieving both EFA and child labour elimination goals. This paper forms part of UCW broader efforts towards improving this understanding of education-child labour links, making use of recent empirical evidence from Mali and Zambia